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Tesla FSD Beta 8 tested for self-driving performance in snowy conditions
- judge2020 6y agoChuck Cook is a FSD beta tester and has a lot of fairly detailed testing with the beta - https://youtube.com/channel/UCwdbsDtaMAh6QXvcbp08YzQ/videos https://youtube.com/channel/UCwdbsDtaMAh6QXvcbp08YzQ/videos https://youtu.be/qj9t5GTeKNE https://youtu.be/qj9t5GTeKNE - Left turn view from both B-Pillar And Headlight Camera Perspective There’s also James Locke which does drives a few routes on each new version - https://youtube.com/c/JamesLocke/videos https://youtube.com/c/JamesLocke/videos
- ketamine__ 6y agoThanks for posting these.
- rmccue 6y agoThis doesn't appear to add anything over the video directly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ2Cir9OkPY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ2Cir9OkPY
- cwhiz 6y agoBasically... the FSD beta is not even close to being able to handle snow. It did not appear to be even 1% of the way toward being usable in snow.
- tempsy 6y agoand can Waymo? or other self driving cos? AFAIK the only real world data we have from Waymo is in flat and sunny suburban Phoenix.
- FartyMcFarter 6y agoWaymo hasn't generally launched any "full-self driving beta" though.
- cwhiz 6y agoI would assume no. I actually don't even know of another company that is putting self driving software directly into consumer hands.
- tyingq 6y agoThey appear to have just added a facility in Ohio. https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/waymo-self-driving-cars-set-out-for-ohio-snow-at-new-testing-facility/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/waymo-self-driving-cars-s...
- ogre_codes 6y agoAFAIK, Waymo pays far less attention to road markings than Tesla. Tesla FSD drives like a human, looking through the cameras and trying to figure out where the car is supposed to go in the lane. Waymo relies heavily on super precise mapping to determine where the road is. In theory Waymo should be able to drive correctly with no road markings at all. The reliance on maps means Waymo can drive in Wayless places, but more reliably in those places.
- kelnos 6y agoProbably not, but we're talking about Tesla here, not Waymo.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoGive it time. An entire fleet rapidly growing is training. Every unit Tesla sells is another sensor platform learning.
- vernie 6y agoDo Teslas have something like a black box so that if there's a catastrophic accident at least the precious data will survive?
- toomuchtodo 6y agoNot extensive Autopilot data, but basic vehicle state attributes (speed, throttle, seatbelts engaged, etc). All vehicles have this black box (event data recorder) in their airbag subsystem. There have only been a handful of Tesla accidents while autopilot was engaged where the vehicle was catastrophically damaged, so it’s a bit of an edge case. https://www.edmunds.com/car-technology/car-black-box-recorders-capture-crash-data.html https://www.edmunds.com/car-technology/car-black-box-recorde...
- undo123 6y agoI’m pretty sure they store far more than your standard black box. This guy was pulling video (and seemingly more) of crashes off Tesla computers from salvage cars: https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1329499639402389506 https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1329499639402389506
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- zmarty 6y ago"Not extensive Autopilot data" -> This is false. The car not only records extensive Autopilot data when it crashes, it also records video.
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- nirushiv 6y agoVery impressive that AP disengaged at the beginning. I don’t have much experience in SDCs, but did some computer vision/ robotics work previously. I truly think that Tesla’s approach, if it works, will win in the long run (ie - next 15-20 years, I think the breakthrough for true L5 isn’t here yet - but will be in improvements in one-shot learning over the next decade). Winter driving is a completely different beast than driving out in Arizona. You have to account for snow banks, slipperiness, lidar obstruction, and control itself - which is much harder. How many thousands of miles of snow driving data does Tesla possess, compared to the #2 player? Tesla’s approach of vision based, AP disengagement-led training will scale better, precisely due to what you’re looking at in this article - yeah, this is an unimpressive demo - but winter driving, rainy driving, dirt road driving are all general cases for Tesla, while they’re special cases for other companies (from what’s been revealed; Comma might be an exception). Most people drive in the place they live, and drive on the highway to visit their friends and parents. It’s easy to be deceived into thinking driving is a small problem space of stop signs and lane changes. But even within just North America, there is enormous variety. There is massive risk involved - these folks are pushing NNs further than any application I’ve seen, but with the last few releases, it suddenly doesn’t look all that crazy. Secondly, combining rules based systems and neural networks is difficult. You end up with the N * M problem, and inevitably end up missing cases. It makes sense to do the absolute basic safety features as rules, and Tesla might be doing this, but all it takes for Tesla’s NN approach to pay off is one leap in explainability. There is an entire industry working on this - and Tesla will be the single biggest benefactor. I don’t know who will win L5 - but I’m putting my bets on Tesla for L4.
- new_realist 6y agoHasn’t Waymo already won? They’re driverless now.
- stoddur 6y agoNo, they still use following cars and remote assistance
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- stephencanon 6y agoThat’s not “snowy conditions,” that’s a clear day on a well-plowed road. We don’t have such nice conditions anytime from January to March in parts of the US. =) Clearly a ways to go, though better than I would have expected.
- ip26 6y agoPlowed, yes. But well-plowed? How much deeper can it get and still be considered plowed? Tesla's have 5 inches clearance tops. FSD doesn't need to be able to drive through two foot drifts.
- stephencanon 6y agoI would call it well-plowed, yeah. Our streets in town don’t look nearly that nice for a few days after each storm, and we all drive around in normal passenger cars with snow tires. The parking lot he starts in has like three inches of slush, after that there’s a quarter or half inch of packed snow on the road.
- undo123 6y agoThis is fascinating. In short, the vision processing aspect still worked quite well, wrt. drivable area, lane lines, pedestrians, etc. Room to improve, for certain, but I’m not seeing a fundamental flaw here. What’s left is the driving part, the “how to make the car follow this path” part. I predict this part will be ridiculously good once Tesla gets around to it. Imagine the traction control in your car, now with immediate-response electric motors, and it knows where it wants to go in 3d space (not just “driver is turning wheel to the right”, but actually knowing the arc to follow). Exciting times.
- FartyMcFarter 6y ago> the vision processing aspect still worked quite well, wrt. drivable area The moment in the video just after 7m0s seems to contradict this.
- tsimionescu 6y ago> What’s left is the driving part, the “how to make the car follow this path” part. I predict this part will be ridiculously good once Tesla gets around to it. So they are almost there with the part others barely even have to do, while the part everyone else is working on will eb ridiculously good once they get round to it? I'm skeptical.
- johntb86 6y agoYeah, I'm curious after seeing the video how much the control could be corrected by a simple change to the car's software. Do Teslas have a sophisticated-enough physics model that you could reduce some constant for the coefficient of friction enough that it would be able to tell that it can't safely drive at 30mph or take those corners at 15mph? Or is the software just hardcoded to assume that if it turns the steering wheel at a specific angle that the car will move a specific amount in that direction?
- undo123 6y agoWhat I’m seeing is a model that has no concept of slippage. I suspect what they’ll do is have the fleet collect data to predict that coefficient of friction. Seems plausible that they could ask all the cars this winter to report instances of wheel slippage, accompanied by video rewound with the spot the wheel slipped on annotated. Could have a prediction for mu at each point on the road ahead of the car. All the pieces are there, it’s just math and NN work.
- emilecantin 6y agoYeah, driving on snow is a completely different beast. Winter tires are a must if you want to have any kind of traction (and no, 4WD / AWD is not a suitable replacement), and you definitely have to avoid sudden moves (my dad taught me to "drive with an egg under your foot"). Adjusting speed to the traction conditions is something I suspect a computer could do much better than I. Having the lane markings be covered is also a challenge, but we usually find the lanes by looking at the road more broadly. If there is any kind of traffic, you'll get "tracks" pretty quick, too. I strongly suspect we'll need a lot more AI training before we see a good FSD solution for colder climates, as it's very different from summer driving.
- snuxoll 6y agoThe mistake most people with AWD make can be summed up in one of my favorite phrases: even two wheel drive has four wheel braking. Winter driving is all about grip, having the extra drive wheels does nothing to help your tires maintain mechanical grip on the road.
- swagmoney69 6y agoDriving in general is all about grip. Hell, in every form of racing I would argue tires are first and foremost the most important part of a car.
- emilecantin 6y agoYeah, that's exactly how I put it as well. Winter tires, once you've seen / touched them, are visibly different: different tread, way softer rubber, etc. I also pretty much always use studded tires, as we've been getting a lot of freezing rain in the last few years, and the one accident I've ever had was due to that (fell in the ditch while driving at ~30 km/h. I had a hard time _walking_ on the road without slipping). The flip side is that they're more likely to skid on pavement, especially in summer. That's why you have both.
- snuxoll 6y ago> Winter tires, once you've seen / touched them, are visibly different: different tread, way softer rubber, etc. Exactly, tires are the single most important element of winter driving. If you live in a place with mild winters all season tires can get you far, but if you get a lot of snow or ice seasonal tires are critical. Cold tires are slick tires that will slide all over hell and back, the tread on winter tires is designed to better move slush and snow out of the way so the contact patch can hopefully reach the road surface; while the softer rubber heats easier so it can get to a nice 'grippy' temperature and grab hold of the road even in conditions where the wet and cold are trying to sap heat from it. During the warmer months these winter tires will be less effective because they have smaller contact patches (due to more/deeper grooves in the tread to drive moisture away), and will actually get hotter than desired (softer rubber) causing a loss of grip as the rubber will want to start shearing off instead. Everyone needs to remember no matter what fancy engine, electronics, etc. your car has - your tires are the only thing that actually touches the ground. Acceleration, braking and turning are all highly depending on their ability to grip the ground (and withstand the forces being placed on them) - so make sure you have the right ones and don't put off replacing ones that are nearing the end of their life.
- TekMol 6y agoWhat is it with the display behind the steering wheel? There also seems to be some other smaller display on the right side of it. I thought Teslas only have one giant screen one the right side of the steering wheel?
- undo123 6y agoModel S/X have a center display and a instrument cluster display. You’re thinking of Model 3/Y.
- trca 6y agoThe Model S and X both have two screens -- one behind the steering wheel, and one in a portrait orientation to the right of the driver. The Model 3 and Y are the ones that have only a single screen to the right of the driver in a landscape orientation.
- dagmx 6y agoThe Tesla Model S and X have an instrument cluster behind the steering wheel plus a vertical screen to the right of the steering column. The Model 3 and Y have only the center screen in a horizontal layout.
- kube-system 6y agoThe model S has a gauge cluster. https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/delivery/public/image/tesla/2558f32f-6c76-40b7-a66b-5d6d3c21ae99/bvlatuR/std/0x0/hero@2_1 https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/delivery/public/image/tesla/2558...
- behringer 6y agoJust knowing where to point the car when you're going to smash into something is half the battle with bad winter conditions. I've hit a handful of ditches and snowy fields in my time that could have been much worse if I had veered right instead of left.
- FartyMcFarter 6y agoAt 5m59s the narrator comments that signalling right on a left-turn has been a bug for a few beta versions. This does not give me any trust that there's decent QA done on this software.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoI too often see human drivers doing this as well, ha.
- dkjaudyeqooe 6y agoIn a Tesla, you are the QA.
- scrozier 6y agoMy wife lets me drive her Model 3 with FSD when I'm good. I drove it quite a bit this past weekend, in lovely Dallas winter conditions. (No snow, no fog, no rain.) While snow is obviously a challenge, the Tesla is so far from being able to handle routine driving in unchallenging conditions, it would be a big miscalculation to think, for example, that Teslas drive with FSD just fine in normal conditions. I would estimate that I take over about once every 3-5 miles in absolutely routine conditions.
- dkjaudyeqooe 6y agoI dub it Full Suicide Deathwish.
- raylad 6y agoI'm waiting to see what Tesla does with the 4D radar they are apparently going to use and when that comes online. I'd feel a lot safer with that kind of data added to the current sensors.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoDoes your wife have the FSD beta 8?
- scrozier 6y agoProbably not. 2020.48.26.
- haberman 6y agoI love my Model 3, but I cannot overstate how little confidence I have that Tesla is anywhere near to full self driving. Just this weekend I drove a 600 mile round trip. It was cold weather with some snow on the shoulders, but the actual road surfaces had no snow. I was mainly using just the cruise control, and no auto-steer. Even with just cruise, the car gets "spooked" from time to time and will suddenly jerk to a slower speed for absolutely no reason, even during the day and with no precipitation. At one point it did this several times within the span of 10 minutes, which was such an unpleasant experience that it made me want to stop using cruise entirely. Besides being jarring for the people in the car, it makes me worry that anyone tailgating will rear end me. Besides that, the rain/sleet that was falling from time to time apparently blocked the camera, so at one point the car wouldn't even let me use cruise any more. The car is tons of fun to drive and I don't regret the purchase at all. But I really don't like the overpromising on full self-driving. EDIT: bmcahren pointed out to me that the new FSD beta software merges images from multiple angles, which my software does not do. I don't know much about that, but it sounds like the kind of change that could lead to a noticeably better result than what I experienced.
- tempsy 6y ago“I love my Tesla but” has become so overused it is on the verge of becoming a meme.
- google234123 6y agoSo only unconditional love for something or someone is not a meme?
- tempsy 6y agono, there’s just a fascinating phenomenon where Tesla owners appear to shrug off bad quality control, bad service, buggy software and controls, safety issues, etc en masse because they love their car.
- tenacious_tuna 6y ago
- vinay427 6y ago> The Tesla Model S in this video is equipped with summer-focused all-season tires, so traction and handling could’ve been better with the winter tires. This is a bit of a nonstarter for gauging snowy weather performance, in my opinion. While comparisons can still be drawn between human and FSD drivers using the same (incredibly unsuitable) tires, handicapping the system doesn't provide a great measure of its prowess or challenges in "snowy conditions." A bit of an aside, but few driving-related topics grind my gears more than people who live in snowy/icy climates driving with cheap (or just bald) all-seasons and complaining that their car "isn't good" in the snow so they need a bigger 4x4, which is of course subsequently kept on stock all-seasons for only a marginal improvement.
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- m3kw9 6y agoThe problem with FSD is that with humans, if they can’t see the road because a window has ice on it, they would go and clean it till they can make good enough judgement. But FSD just keep on going with less performance, whether you know it or not. They need to clean themselves reliably
- bcatanzaro 6y agoMy autopilot slammed on the brakes while on the freeway last week because it was confused by the sun glancing off the pavement. It was scary. I have Zero confidence in Tesla self-driving.
- renewiltord 6y agoIt would be a cool feature if cars using autopilot would have a notification device somewhere so I could see they're currently autopiloting as I drive behind them so I can give them more room (since they won't behave human-like).
- ogre_codes 6y agoIf you are giving proper following distance, it shouldn't be needed. Most people follow way too close, doubly so in snowy conditions.
- renewiltord 6y agoNah, all auto-driving cars perform poorly in stop and go traffic. I can usually maintain average velocity around 2-5 mph so I don't have to stop and go, but auto-driving cars will accelerate and brake hard, which makes it hard for me to judge whether we're out of the present traffic and I'm holding up people behind by not accelerating, or whether I should continue the crawl. Correct following distance in that traffic is ~3-4 metres (~10-12 feet) which is easy to maintain against a human or against an auto-car you know is auto-driving, but that takes a few seconds to calibrate that it's auto-driving. I've made many rush hour commutes from my home in Glen Park to SOMA with very few brake-use events¹ and travel team equivalent to original Google Maps prediction. ¹ One of the many metrics I attempt to min-max during all of my drives
- mola 6y agoCrazy it's called fully self driving, and at the same time it requires a driver to attend the wheel at all times. This is at most a sophisticated driver assistant. The PR on this is just disgustingly disengenious.
- ljlolel 6y agoWhy Tesla Autopilot ought to be awful, until it’s perfect https://jperla.medium.com/why-tesla-autopilot-ought-to-be-awful-until-its-perfect-8fb0b0764ef8 https://jperla.medium.com/why-tesla-autopilot-ought-to-be-aw...
- frongpik 6y agoIMHO, tesla and others do the autopilot thing wrong and the right way to do it is to predict the trajectory for the next 5 sec and display it on the HUD-like screen projected to the windshield. This way the driver would see where the car is about to go and take control only when the predicted trajectory is wrong. This would solve the trust problem: the driver would know what's going on inside the car's "brains" and wouldn't need to act like an instructor to a epileptic student that can collapse at any moment. This would mostly solve the liability problem as well. The downside is that such autopilot can't leave truck drivers without a job.