21 ms·

Tesla's “full self driving” beta is potentially dangerous

444 points by mdbug 6y ago

nrjames 6y ago
It’s laughable and potentially dangerous but also just available to 2k people, from whom it is revoked if the interior camera shows they aren’t paying attention. Musk is the first person to say “be careful” when using it. The article is kind of clickbaity. No, Tesla’s FSD is not ready for wide usage. That’s also hardly a secret.
- Alupis 6y ago
  What's the point of FSD if you have to pay attention? Come on folks... Elon has been claiming for years and years that you'll be able to read a book, or take a nap while in FSD mode, and FSD is "just a year away...". He also claimed all the hardware existed in current-model vehicles and would just be "unlocked" later. The lies pile up, yet people clamor over each other to defend Tesla and Musk.
  - kneel 6y ago
    How else are they going to train the model?
    - Alupis 6y ago
      What does training a ML model have to do with telling people their new car will have all the hardware to unlock Level 5 Autonomy - when in fact that turned out to be a lie at best, fraudulent at worst? People plopped down huge money expecting Musk's promises to be true... Here's an article from 2016[1] where Musk makes exactly that claim. From the video embedded in the article, I'd wager we're a long ways away from any Tesla having anything remotely similar to FSD... yet Musk still claims Next Year™[2] I'm at a loss why Tesla even decided to wade into the FSD waters. What was wrong with making a really good EV that people wanted to buy? FSD seems to have become a major distraction for Tesla... now plagued with build quality issues and FSD issues. [1] https://evannex.com/blogs/news/elon-musk-self-driving-hardware-is-here-for-tesla https://evannex.com/blogs/news/elon-musk-self-driving-hardwa... [2] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/elon-musk-full-self-driving-tesla-earnings-call/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/elon-musk-full-self-drivi...
      - kneel 6y ago
        FSD works, it's not better than humans yet. Needs more training.
  - yawaworht1978 6y ago
    I agree, it is just a transportation vehicle. Musk is a deceiver, he is not accidentally optimistic with his "forecasts". I will believe fsd or autopilot works properly when musk and his kids do a coast to coast trip in winter from NYC, via Chicago driving through every city at rush hour. Blindfolded with no driver intervention. Then it would deserve a fsd label. There should be no room for double speak on this matter. People say that humans are bad drivers as well. True, if distracted, tired, DUI, inexperienced. Still, no human with sound eyes and a drivers licence would drive like in that video. Unless on the run from police maybe.
    - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
      Even distracted, tired, drunk drivers do much better than this. None of us are perfect, we’ve all driven drunk. How many times you got caught? It’s the fact people don’t get caught or crashed before that they risk it. So really these vehicles are driving worse than humans at their worst. That’s probably why we are underestimating the problem.
      - frosted-flakes 6y ago
        > we’ve all driven drunk. No we haven't. Some people are responsible drivers and don't drive after drinking alcohol. Others don't drink at all. I've driven while tired, but never drunk. Apart from that, I agree with you.
        ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
        True, most of us then. Definitely the majority. I’ve seen people sleeping and driving in bumper to bumper traffic without causing any problems. So there’s something going on in the brain that we’re not getting.
      - yawaworht1978 6y ago
        Good point, too many have operated a car in some unfit state. The remedy for this could be so much simpler than waiting for Musks fantasies to materialize. Breathalizer integrated to car , quick drug test and some device for detecting tiredness which all need to be "ticked" , else the car engine will not crank up or "electro" up. The distraction issue could be minimized as well, albeit with rather invasive methods. All the above plus taxi apps becoming abundant and the common sense to assess when to use a taxi and the fsd software will take a long time to be better than humans. So far, summon does not even work and i remember driving in a Mercedes with lane assist and automatic braking if the distance to vehicle ahead is too small in 2010 or something. Did Tesla even exist at that time or where they at the stage where they used Lotus cars and replaced the drive train and the stickers? The features are not much better than what I have seen in a 2010 Mercer.
  - matz1 6y ago
    FSD means the car has the ability to drive itself. It doesn't necessarily mean it can drive perfectly without accident. Thats why you still need to pay attention.
    - alacombe 6y ago
      Come on, of course it does. Don't serve us the old "it's not a bug, it's a feature".
      - matz1 6y ago
        Where has tesla claim/promise that it can drive itself perfectly without accident ?
        alacombe 6y ago
        Musk himself does.
        matz1 6y ago
        As far as I know he never does. Maybe he said it will be eventually but never promised it can do it right now.
        alacombe 6y ago
        He literally said "you'll be able to sleep in your car on FSD mode".
    - 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
      I have an old 2004 toyota. If I let go of the wheel, it'll drive itself for a bit before I either crash or retake control. I never realized it had FSD. Full self driving means the car drives itself fully.
      - matz1 6y ago
  - nickik 6y ago
    So because his predictions were wrong they should just stop and give up? Its not FSD because its beta of the software that will enable that. That's the point, your training the network. The hardware does not seem to be the constraint here. CommaAI does a great job on a processor much, much slower. If their prediction is wrong, they put their own money on the line to upgrade the hardware if need be. I don't think they were lies, Elon usually just says what he believes, often he is right but optimistic, sometimes he is wrong. Clearly he was most wrong about AI but he is right often enough and always speaks his mind. This is what basically everybody that interacts with Elon says, the guy is candid and says what he believes at that moment. This has been reported by people that worked with him and by people like journalist who have interviewed him (recently just in Liftoff book). Tesla has to put most of the money made from the FSD sale into a holding account, as they have not delivered the feature. Generally more generally, I don't think its smart marketing or communication that they are doing.
  - jfoster 6y ago
    Have you ever used regular old cruise control? You still have to pay attention to what speed you should be moving at, and it makes it much easier for you to pay attention.
- jacques_chester 6y ago
  So it's full self-driving, but it's not, like, full self-driving? Musk is "the first to say" a lot of things.
  - samatman 6y ago
    Or it's full self-driving but it's like, in beta? If I were participating in a beta test and my phone kept crashing, I could complain about that, but not much, right? beta software does that. Of course a car crashing is a much bigger deal, so, like: pay attention. I'm pessimistic about it ever getting out of beta, personally. But it is what it says on the label. I've seen other, equally cherry-picked videos, where the FSD system has done a competent job of getting from A to B with zero driver intervention.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      Realistically, it's a display of just how far away FSD actually is. The mistakes the car makes in the video are unforgivable and extremely dangerous. > I've seen other, equally cherry-picked videos Cherry picked? Did you watch the video? It's a complete drive through Oakland - not cherry picked snippets.
      - samatman 6y ago
        Yes, cherry picked. I've seen video which is also unedited, and which shows Tesla FSD behaving just fine. It was promoted onto my Twitter feed by people who want to believe FSD is going well. Whereas this one was promoted to the top of HN by people who want to sell clicks promoting the idea that FSD is going poorly. Either one is cherry picking. What wouldn't be cherry picking is watching as much video of FSD driving as you can, collecting statistics on it, trying to make sure your samples are representative (good luck if you aren't Tesla), and writing up a report on what you find. This is, of course, a ton of work.
        Alupis 6y ago
        Your definition of "cherry picked" seems to differ from the generally accepted definition. The guy that made the video and posted it to youtube is a Tesla "fanboy". I doubt his goal was to paint Tesla's FSD software in a bad light. Yet, in one video, the Tesla nearly hits pedestrians, nearly side swipes other vehicles, drives in the wrong lane, comes to a complete stop in the middle of a busy road, and tried to drive straight through a iron fence. That doesn't look very good to me...
shiftpgdn 6y ago
Road and Track lacks any sort journalistic of credibility and yet again it shows here. For years they would always rate BMW as their absolute top pick (despite huge issues like the e46 chassis failures) while being wined, dined and flown all over the country by BMW's press arm. I would not be surprised if they cherry picked this video because Tesla doesn't "kiss the ring" and buy ads, wine and dine journalists, give sneak previews, etc. I don't even own a Tesla (I do have an Audi E-tron though) or own Tesla stock directly so it's not like I'm a fanboy or anything. I'm just tired of the total failure of journalism in this country.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  What do your feelings about the magazine really have to do with these events? Just watch the video and comment upon that, if you prefer. It's the primary source.
- agency 6y ago
  I don't have a horse in this race re: Road and Track but in what sense is this video "cherry picked"? It's a genuine video of Tesla's FSD feature. You can watch it yourself and judge the quality of driving. I don't understand what this BMW business has to do with anything.
  - drusepth 6y ago
    OP probably meant "cherry picked" in the sense of R&T picking a purposefully-nonrepresentative video of the "average FSD experience". The video is genuine and real but it shows a completely different experience from pretty much almost every other drive-through FSD video I've seen (which have overall been mostly flawless, with a couple other ones sprinkled in that have also been pretty bad at times). It's important to report on outliers and worst-case scenarios though, especially when the outcome could be death. Obviously this beta has a lot more work to be done before it can graduate into widespread use.
- walrus01 6y ago
  The youtube video embedded in the article does not appear to have been produced by Road and Track. In fact it looks like a channel of a Tesla fan, it even has referral links in it for Tesla stuff. All they did was find the video and write an article about it. I watched the video. If I had to pick an uncharitable description for just how bad it drives, and how jerky and unpredictable it is, I would say that it drives like a drunk 17 year old.
addicted 6y ago
Why wouldn’t everyone jump at the opportunity to pay Elon Musk money and risk their lives and time so he can get enough data to then make even more billions.
- todd3834 6y ago
  People probably want to be the first to try something that, if it worked, would change humanity as we know it. Or even just contribute to the progress in their own way. Money is hardly the only motivation for many things, nothing stopping them from owning Tesla stock if they really believed their involvement was going to make billions though.
  - barbazoo 6y ago
    How would a self driving car "change humanity as we know it"? Sure it might make travel by car suck less but not in any significant way that would change humanity in any meaningful way. At least not outside of a very narrow bubble we might be a part of.
  - addicted 6y ago
    Humanity was supposed to have been changed 4 years ago. It’s fairly obvious that the only thing people will achieve is killing themselves, their loved ones, or innocent bystanders. And Tesla will bring us nowhere closer. Anyways, hasn’t Tesla been far more successful as a Bitcoin marketing company in a week than as a manufacturer of cars for over a decade? If you do want to risk your lives over advancing humanity why not risk it with Waymo which is actually making progress in this arena.
- justanotherhn 6y ago
  Nobody is asking you to do it so why are you so pressed?
  - sundaeofshock 6y ago
    Because Teslas pose a risk to people who did not throw money at Musk. I didn’t sign-up for the beta program, so I’m pretty pissed to be an unwilling participant.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
yawaworht1978 6y ago
How can any regulator watch this without intervention? Tesla should upload this video to their page where the misleading video was "driver would not have to be here" Not saying other manufacturers are worse, but this borders fraudulent advertisement.
- avs733 6y ago
  You are assuming some has given them the authority to intervene.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    SEC can punish stock scams.
    - mattnewton 6y ago
      Ah yes, the “everything is securities fraud” loophole Matt Levine always talks about.
      - IncRnd 6y ago
        This, specifically, appears to fall into that category.
        mattnewton 6y ago
        I’m not disagreeing. Here’s an example of the blog I was referencing. It’s interesting how the SEC acts like a catch all bucket of stopping “bad” behavior under this reading of the law. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
        IncRnd 6y ago
        Thank you.
xvector 6y ago
December 2015: "We're going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years." January 2016: "In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land & not blocked by borders, eg you're in LA and the car is in NY" June 2016: "I really consider autonomous driving a solved problem, I think we are less than two years away from complete autonomy, safer than humans, but regulations should take at least another year," Musk said. March 2017: "I think that [you will be able to fall asleep in a tesla] is about two years" March 2018: "I think probably by end of next year [end of 2019] self-driving will encompass essentially all modes of driving and be at least 100% to 200% safer than a person." Nov 15, 2018: "Probably technically be able to [self deliver Teslas to customers doors] in about a year then its up to the regulators" Feb 19 2019: "We will be feature complete full self driving this year. The car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up, take you all the way to your destination without an intervention this year. I'm certain of that. That is not a question mark. It will be essentially safe to fall asleep and wake up at their destination towards the end of next year" April 12th 2019: "I'd be shocked if not next year, at the latest that having the person, having human intervene will decrease safety. DECREASE! (in response to human supervision and adding driver monitoring system)" April 22nd 2019: "We expect to be feature complete in self driving this year, and we expect to be confident enough from our standpoint to say that we think people do not need to touch the wheel and can look out the window sometime probably around the second quarter of next year." April 22nd 2019: “We will have more than one million robotaxis on the road,” Musk said. “A year from now, we’ll have over a million cars with full self-driving, software... everything." May 9th 2019: "We could have gamed an LA/NY Autopilot journey last year, but when we do it this year, everyone with Tesla Full Self-Driving will be able to do it too" Dec 1, 2020: “I am extremely confident of achieving full autonomy and releasing it to the Tesla customer base next year. But I think at least some jurisdictions are going to allow full self-driving next year.” - Elon’s just been repeating the same promise for the over half a decade now. Oldest trick in the book. Disclaimer: I drive a Model 3
- ckastner 6y ago
  You forgot the best quote, I think, from Autonomy Day in April 2019: “We will have more than one million robotaxis on the road,” Musk said. “A year from now, we’ll have over a million cars with full self-driving, software... everything."
kmonsen 6y ago
While I in general agree with the article, counterpoint is that there have not been any Tesla accidents recently while in autopilot mode I believe? Edit: I guess I was wrong, the accidents are now so common we don’t care anymore. In the beginning they were hyped up a lot.
- yawaworht1978 6y ago
  I have to object here, yesterday into a parked police car with blue lights on.
- xvector 6y ago
  It’s because we are scared as fuck with autopilot on and are hyper attentive. My car drives like a drunk teenager and routinely tries to murder me in autopilot.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    This is awful, but it did make me laugh out loud. That said, I have a lot of faith in Papa Musk and his team. I think this nut will be cracked eventually, but its just going to take a lot of time to do so - far more than the timeline he initially proposed, as detailed in your excellent post earlier.
    - hobs 6y ago
      Why would any of this faith be created given the continuous line of bullshit you've been fed?
      - justanotherhn 6y ago
        Because most of his promises came through (eventually)
      - cbozeman 6y ago
        Peter Thiel once said, "Never bet against Elon Musk." Elon said he was going to build a private space launch company. He did. Elon said he was going to build an electric car company. He did. Elon said he was going to build a $35,000 electric car for the masses. He did. Elon said he was going to build a worldwide satellite constellation for Internet access. He is. Rapidly. Everything Elon has said he was going to do, he has. He hasn't always done it at the speed at which he said he would, but he does always get it done. He (meaning his team / company) will eventually develop a fully self-driving car. No, it may not occur at the pace at which he proclaimed, but I have confidence it'll occur.
NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
Two things I think about whenever self driving comes up: 1. Success isn't perfect driving. It's when it drives statistically better than most people. Humans themselves are often terrible drivers ourselves, so why would we hold a robot to a standard we can't even achieve? 2. Ford's customers were right all along: What we want is faster horses.
- zanecodes 6y ago
  Personally, I would consider success to be when it drives statistically better than _me_, not just _most people_. It really depends on how you choose to aggregate your data; if it's better on average, well, the average crash rate per mile driven for human drivers could be dragged down by a minority of very bad drivers. If that's the case, then if everyone bought a Tesla and used FSD, the total crash rate per mile driven would go up, despite FSD being "statistically better than most people" by that measure.
  - NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
    I mean this is what I'm getting at, if by important measures like preventing deaths, injuries, and damage it's statistically better than humans (and there's a whole discussion on how you collect and decide on that data), even if the behavior is weirdly unlike a human driver, is that success? Is that good enough? I'm not asserting it even, just spitballing because this is fascinating to me.
    - zanecodes 6y ago
      Yeah, it's something I'd be interested in reading more about: how do we define "better" in this context? Better for whom: society as a whole? Pedestrians? Drivers of self-driving cars? Passengers of self-driving cars? Drivers of non-self-driving cars? And so on...
      - NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
        Precisely. The impression I got from the video was the car was way more cautious, even more courteous than an overly cautious human drivers would be. It definitely fucked up, but if we define "better" as driving exactly like a skilled human driver, then I expect it to kill exactly as many people as we do. The counter-intuitive advice people are given for things like an animal suddenly leaping into the road is to just hit it, because slamming on the breaks can and has lead to the car's occupants dying for the sake of a squirrel. What do we expect a self driving car to do in that situation? Just imagine the outrage and headlines if a Tesla does what humans are told to do, and kills a dog or cat!
matz1 6y ago
Human also laughably bad and potentially dangerous in driving. Full self driving doesn't mean perfect driving, it will always be continuous improvement.
- jacques_chester 6y ago
  This is what-aboutism. Humans are not the subject of scrutiny for this video. It was the human who countermanded the dangerous decisions made by the FSD system.
  - NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
    No, it's accurately pointing out that perfect driving by an AI is unachievable, if we demand that, then 'self driving' will literally never be a thing. Ever. The standard should be: "Safer than human driving" shouldn't it? And when you realize that humans are already terrible drivers it doesn't seem so reckless to hold AI driving to a realistic, achievable standard instead of an ideology. Another way to look at it: imagine two different human drivers, one is clearly "better" and faster than the other, but wrecks occasionally, but the other is a "bad" driver, but never does. Which is a more desirable model for an AI to emulate?
    - morpheos137 6y ago
      Humans have a semantic model of the world. "AI," so far does not. When human drivers see things they can usually discern what they mean, even with bad and high latency sensor input much faster and better than "AI." The problem to solve with self-driving is not sensor field or latency, of course a machine can do better, rather it is integrating what is sensed into a reasonable plan of action, "AI" demonstrably sucks at this.
    - saalweachter 6y ago
      Has anyone given a Tesla -- or any other autonomous vehicle, for that matter -- a driver's test?
      - 6y ago
naebother 6y ago
Watching the video gives me flashbacks of trying to teach someone to drive. Actually I'd probably prefer that than trying to babysit this headache in traffic. At least then I'd get paid for the hassle.
- sobellian 6y ago
  Why do I get the feeling that teaching someone (or something) to drive is exactly the idea with the FSD beta?
  - naebother 6y ago
    That's probably part of the calculus, but mainly it's to deliver at least something on an over-promised feature. I also wonder how good the training examples are, if they're just using average drivers without any quality control. Like when I'm teaching someone to drive, I'm following traffic laws to the tee. But when I'm doing my day to day driving, it's mostly about optimizing time. There's probably a reason why Waymo hired and trained drivers to teach their algo in a standardized way.
  - alea_iacta_est 6y ago
    Yes, like teaching a driver who can't understand complex situations, who is fearless and without conscience. Besides that it's the same.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - xur17 6y ago
      Both fearless and lacking confidence.
S_A_P 6y ago
Oh look another Anti Tesla auto journalist that came from Jalopnik. That is a surprise... And to clarify again, I think Full Self Driving and Autopilot are bad names for driver assist that does not fully self drive or autopilot in the sense that the average layperson would think those terms mean. I dont know if Tesla will ever get to full self driving or autopilot in that respect. I also think that the driver assist as it exists today will prevent entire categories of accidents even if it causes another class of accidents. I think the net difference will be that we are safer on the road because of it. While we are so quick to call out Tesla for the quality of autopilot we forget that at least 50% of the people on the road are distracted and have no such safety net. At least once per drive I sit behind someone who decided that the red light was the perfect time to catch up on their digital life and misses the green light. I see people weaving like a drunk driver and going 20 mph under the speed limit so they can have a buffer zone in front of them while they phone and drive. We need a solution to this as people arent going to stay off their phones...
- jowsie 6y ago
  Did you watch the video the article is mostly based on? The car trys to drive into several objects several times, other cars, oncoming traffic, literal walls. It's dangerous that they just put this out for people to 'test' while making outrageous claims about how well their tech works.
- stefan_ 6y ago
  What do you mean? The thing is it's trying to do full self driving. It just happens to steer into people, cars and walls while doing so! There is a big difference between "bad marketing" and shipping wannabe self-driving code.
- mmmmmbop 6y ago
  More than ten years after ACC and lane keep assist were first broadly introduced, Tesla took those two technologies and rebranded them as Autopilot, conveniently removing the safety feature requiring drivers to keep their hands on the wheel. Now they've released a "full self driving" beta that can not actually fully self drive without killing its passengers, while Waymo has been operating a publicly accessible, fully autonomous taxi service for years now. Last I checked they don't even have safety drivers anymore. And somehow, there are still people who seem to believe that Tesla is pushing the envelope.
rococode 6y ago
The video is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=antLneVlxcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=antLneVlxcs I think it's fair to say that there are definitely some sketchy moments in there. The one that surprised me the most was marked "Near Collision (2)" in the video (12:25). A car really close to the Tesla doesn't seem to be picked up at all until it's too late: https://i.imgur.com/BG0gN2R.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/BG0gN2R.jpeg You can see in the first frame there that on the screen there's nothing in front of the Tesla, it's just the usual white background. But right out the windshield we can see the car is already very close. At the bottom frame which is a split second later, the car is finally detected and we can see the screen now shows the car. But at that point the driver manually intervened with a sharp swerve right as they were about to hit the car. Going frame by frame on Youtube the green box indicating the car was only there for 4 frames before the driver disengaged. I was aware that self driving is far from ready but I didn't know that even basic detection stuff like this is buggy. Double parked cars, people walking in the street, etc, I would expect to be problematic. But this is not really an edge case, it's just a regular car at close range with no obstructions in between...
- GhostVII 6y ago
  According to what I've seen people saying online, in most of these cases Tesla does identify the vehicle but it identifies it as going in the wrong direction so doesn't think it is a problem for pathfinding. Vehicles going in the opposite direction are marked in yellow on the visualization, so they are hard to see sometimes.
  - HanayamaTriplet 6y ago
    The frame grabs of this incident clearly show no vehicle, yellow or not. There are a couple of other yellow objects visible, so this is not a case where it would be hard to see.
    - GhostVII 6y ago
      In the video I actually do see the yellow outline if I really turn up the resolution, it's super faint though, hard to tell if it is there the whole time. Easier to see in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClWlVCwHsI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClWlVCwHsI , at 4:00 the cars are all yellow when they shouldn't be.
GhostVII 6y ago
This [0] is much worse than the video in the article, IMO. It repeatedly tries to pull out in front of cars going 45+ miles an hour, in some cases giving the driver very little time to stop it. For level 5 (what Elon keeps claiming they will have very soon), they need to be able to go tens of thousands of miles without a crash-avoiding human intervention, not 10 minutes. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClWlVCwHsI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClWlVCwHsI
- walrus01 6y ago
  Wow that's pretty bad. I only watched about half the video - but it appears the Tesla is patiently waiting for the oncoming traffic to clear, same as any human driver would. And then when there is a suitable gap in incoming traffic that any human could accelerate calmly and normally across, to finish the turn correctly, the Tesla just doesn't go. And then in the time that it took to be indecisive, more cars appear and it decides "nope, not time to go now either, keep waiting". Then at 4:05 in the video it does decide to go and almost accelerates right into the path of an oncoming car. At 5:01 in the video it clearly has plenty of time to go and just doesn't move.
  - camjohnson26 6y ago
    When learning to drive you have to learn how to have the judgment to commit to a decision, the car seems incapable of that and keeps reevaluating its decisions at every step. The problem is that in these cases you have to commit and accelerate to make it through.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Just watched the first two. I would've gone on those, probably wouldn't trust the ai to accelerate fast enough though.
  - mjhoy 6y ago
    Yeah, you missed where it seems to nearly pull out right in front of a truck hauling a boat (~8:27).
dec0dedab0de 6y ago
I haven't really been following self driving closely, but this looks way better than i was expecting. Those streets were very busy, and it mostly did ok. I thought city driving was just off the table, and all the focus was going to be on long haul highway driving.
- mempko 6y ago
  Would you pay for what you saw in the video?
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    I would pay for a device that would detect and alert me about an FSD-enabled car being nearby so I can keep as much distance between me and them as possible.
  - dec0dedab0de 6y ago
    no, but in general I wouldn't pay for any beta test. I would drive around in it and report bugs if they paid me though. (incase anyone from tesla is reading)
- Geee 6y ago
  That video shows the worst performance of the system. On less busy streets it usually does much better. Highway driving has already been solved. City streets is the missing part from FSD (which is now in beta). Mountain road: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nr9_wBPAHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nr9_wBPAHs Highway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPrsRM2cxGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPrsRM2cxGs
  - camjohnson26 6y ago
    Highway driving is not solved.
  - mikeyouse 6y ago
    Then again, Teslas repeatedly crash into stationary objects, even on the highway, the latest from this week: https://mobile.twitter.com/MSPFirstDist/status/1372152867612733441/photo/ https://mobile.twitter.com/MSPFirstDist/status/1372152867612...
morpheos137 6y ago
What is fascinating to me about the "self-driving" phenomenon is how many otherwise intelligent people got taken in by the hype.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > What is fascinating to me about the "self-driving" phenomenon is how many otherwise intelligent people got taken in by the hype. I've read that "intelligent" people are often easy marks for con artists, because they're often so overconfident about their judgements and opinions.
gibsonf1 6y ago
ML AI gives you perception only, no conceptual understanding. That conceptual awareness of the environment and causality is most definitely a requirement for safe autonomous driving.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Could you give an example of "conceptual understanding" that humans have which is necessary for safe autonomous driving? How does autonomous driving differ from, say, playing poker when it comes to implementing a machine learning solution?
  - lovecg 6y ago
    Playing poker is trivial to automate, it’s essentially fully solved. Driving is often surprisingly social. I had many instances where I observed somebody pulling out of a driveway in front of me and something about how their head was turned or whatnot meant I subconsciously “knew” in a split second that they were about to go full speed without looking, so I had to slow down. Stop sign tie-breaking gets complicated. Pedestrian/bike rider eye contact is a thing. “Do I know that they know that I know what their intentions are?” And so on. It’s not as complex as fully solving human communication, but it seems like a huge challenge when mixing human and automated driving on the same roads. But I also don’t know if there were similar transition concerns when horse buggies were being replaced with cars and people had wrong expectations? Maybe we should paint these cars in bright orange and have flashing lights on all the time so that people learn to expect the different behaviour. (The huge Lidar rig on top of some self driving cars works to that purpose)
  - gibsonf1 6y ago
    The reason we humans can understand very complex situations with very little information very quickly (such as navigating through traffic) is that we not only perceive that "stuff" is out there and moving, but we also instantly classify that stuff, and in so doing, understand what it can and cant do almost instantly. A large semi truck can only maneuver in certain ways and certain speeds, a car moving erratically likely has a driver that is somehow impaired, a child is fully upredictable and could jump in the street, etc. We know about not just that stuff is out there, but what that stuff is, and how it causally can behave given how things have been behaving up to that point.
grumple 6y ago
As a lead engineer, I would not let software like this out into the wild. The risk is so high and it's not ready. A lot of this would be caught by any engineer driving the car for... 15 minutes. You have thousands of engineers to throw at the problem - why can't you stay in a lane while turning? Why can't you read turn arrows in the road? Both of these are extremely fixable problems. Why is the car stopping in the middle of nowhere?
- morpheos137 6y ago
  >Why is the car stopping in the middle of nowhere? garbage collection?
- jeffbee 6y ago
  This is the part I can't understand. You release software to dogfood, public beta, etc when you want to get more feedback and you've exhausted the ability of the previous tier to provide it. You wouldn't release software to dogfood if the programmers on the project can readily find defects in a minute or two, you go to dogfood if the engineers use it all the time and can't find new defects. The only reason for this FSD software to be in the wild is it is part of the larger pump and dump scam.
  - matz1 6y ago
    It would take too long, on the contrary you want to release it as early as possible. It need to learn from real life situation. To get a true real life data you have to... release it to real life situation.
- sebirocs 6y ago
  I think is because they're going for a full machine learning approach, the neural network tries to learn the best solution but is unable to receive simple instructions like "go in a straight line"
  - jowday 6y ago
    They're not going for a full ML approach. That's just more Elon marketing language. Tesla reverse engineers have gotten their hands on the FSD beta and inspected the internals - they use ML for perception and scene understanding, but all of that information feeds into traditional robotics prediction, planning, and pathfinding algorithms.
mtlynch 6y ago
For most of the video, I felt like "laughably bad" was an exaggeration. The car made poor questionable moves, but it seemed to err on the side of being too cautious and too protective of pedestrians. The last two minutes were really shocking. The car would have crashed several times had the driver not been extremely vigilant. Tesla should not be testing this on the general public.
- notJim 6y ago
  Whether it's laughable or not is a judgment call, but as a frequent pedestrian and cyclist, cars erratically swerving all over the road like that is not what I would call protective.
  - tiborsaas 6y ago
    I agree, protecting the cyclists should have higher priority considering the damage that a crash can cause.
- camjohnson26 6y ago
  It stops in the middle of the road, drives into the back of parked cars, shakes back and forward, cuts across lanes, stays out of its lane, misreads road signs, pulls in front of cars, gets honked at repeatedly, drives on the wrong side of the road, and drives so slow and unsure that other cars have no idea what to expect it to do. It isn’t only laughably bad it’s absurd that it hasn’t been banned and Tesla forced to issue refunds.
xedeon 6y ago
https://twitter.com/WholeMarsBlog/status/1370974296730824704?s=20 https://twitter.com/WholeMarsBlog/status/1370974296730824704...
Animats 6y ago
Cruise has some long videos of self driving in San Francisco. It's far better than this. What's striking is watching the system's screen vs the real world, and seeing Tesla not detecting important things. Tesla's big problem is simply that they are not very good at building a 3D model of the world around their vehicles. They try to do it on vision alone, and, after over five years, they still can't do that reliably.
- peripitea 6y ago
  I don't follow this too closely but are you referring to company-released videos? Seems unfair to compare a compilation of bad incidents from one of many (thousands?) of users of Tesla's system to one curated by the company releasing it. I've seen a few videos of the Tesla doing 15+ minute drives without intervention too.
- jy3 6y ago
  > It's far better than this. I don't know what you're referring to. Any links?
- HellDunkel 6y ago
  I would be very surprised if Cruise had a better 3d rep. It is probably far worse and that is why they are hiding it.
  - jtsiskin 6y ago
    They have a lidar. They already have an accurate 3D rep from the sensors
    - HellDunkel 6y ago
      They have a startup and an unfulfilled promise. Their ADAS supercruise has no 3d view. Their self driving vehicle is no competition to tesla.
      - ra7 6y ago
qbasic_forever 6y ago
Putting the near-misses and safety issues aside, this looks absolutely maddening and horrible to drive even in the best conditions. Just watching it sit there staring at a plainly empty and clear crosswalk with a green light, the loud blips and alarms as cars get close, etc. would make me so anxious to be behind the wheel.
vincentmarle 6y ago
People tell me I'm crazy when I tell them I always try to avoid driving near Tesla cars on the highway, but it seems my suspicions were correct.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  The number of people that I've seen off in their own worlds doing their makeup or tapping away on their phone using Tesla's Autopilot was reason enough for me to avoid those cars while driving. I've seen someone using Autopilot nearly drive another car off the road when lane switching before, and the driver was just nodding off as if nothing happened. Tesla's FSD scares the absolute shit out of me.
pengaru 6y ago
I'd appreciate it if the NHTSA and DOT would do their fucking jobs and halt operation of these semi-autonomous 5000lb+ hazardous bots on public roads. Us non-Tesla drivers have not signed up to be part of your volunteer risk-taking beta-testing team, go do this shit on private roads.
- pnt12 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm surprised this is allowed. It's risky for the owner, who opts in but may be mislead about the current accuracy of the model, but even worse, it's dangerous to all 3rd party drivers, ciclists and pedestrians. It's basically driving like a drunk guy.
  - animal_spirits 6y ago
    I've contacted my representatives about this, I believe that all of us who are concerned should do so as well.
karmicthreat 6y ago
The worst thing about this system is it doesn't make a decision and stick with it. It just kind of meanders between lanes. Then when it realizes it is going in the wrong direction it does the wrong thing to get back on track. It should just follow a turn lane and renavigate.
- oliv__ 6y ago
  Agreed. Interesting to reflect on what us human will do instinctively vs what the computer comes up with.
- frongpik 6y ago
  I don't get what's so difficult about self driving. The car just needs to show a path it's going to follow during the next ten seconds and stick with it. Only when the path appears wrong, the driver takes control. This let's the driver know how the car sees the road. Unless the self driving saga has a different goal: transportation as a service. This is where the money are and this is where full auto driving is a necessity.
  - camjohnson26 6y ago
    What’s so difficult about intelligent language models, you just pick the next few words the model will say.
    - karmicthreat 6y ago
      Yea, really. What's so difficult about X usually means you have not thought about the problem enough. What's so difficult about making an app? You mean other than having to have some understanding of 20 years of tech its built on top of?
  - sfjailbird 6y ago
    > The car just needs to show a path it's going to follow during the next ten seconds It could even project this onto the wind screen. Some new cars do a neat trick with perspective adjustment so the projection appears 'flat' even on a tilted wind screen.
cblconfederate 6y ago
Well it might be useful if you are a driving instructor cause it acts like a bad student
xwolfi 6y ago
You don't say ! Electric Jesus would have exagerated ? Probably a one off ...
kwdc 6y ago
I'm of the opinion that if the auto-pilot was a real driver, I'd like that "driver": 1) put into the passenger seat and required to simply observe, 2) sent back to school to learn the road rules, 3) re-sit the test to confirm knowledge and re-sit practical. I also noticed a few sudden stops from the way the guys lurched forwards at stops. Getting rear-ended due to pointless sudden stops is a fail as well. Its not ready for use. From what I've just seen from that video I'd be de-rating that "driver" from full license back to probationary or more realistically, right back to learner. I'm glad there was a human at the wheel.
ohiovr 6y ago
If a company could produce a computer that could think with the complexity of a 3 year old that would be revolutionary. To put 3 year olds behind the wheel of 1 gigajoule of kinetic energy would also be revolutionary.
- camjohnson26 6y ago
  Yes recreating life would be revolutionary. Worth remembering that science has never created life from non life. We’ve manipulated DNA and cloned but never created from scratch even the simplest life forms. We shouldn’t assume that recreating human brains in computers is an unavoidable eventuality, computers are different than brains.
bit_logic 6y ago
There's a saying in software, you throw away the first version. The main idea is that when you start on something, you don't know what you don't know. The labor of the first version allows you to learn the domain, the limits, edge cases, and what you need to do. Then the second version starts on a much better foundation. At this point, many teams (Waymo, Tesla, Uber, etc.) have been working on this for years. And there must have been times when the engineers thought, this would work so much better if only... Maybe it's time to gather these thoughts and sort them by low effort/high reward. For example, if all cars had a cheap sticker indicating forward vs back, would that improve self-driving performance by a lot? It wouldn't be that hard to get car manufacturers to add a sticker somewhere. Or what about traffic lights? Maybe adding a cheap light or sensor to it would vastly improve self-driving performance. Or those road reflectors, can they get some minor changes to help the self-driving software? It doesn't seem likely that level 5 or even level 4 will happen when self-driving is literally defined as replacing what a human driver would do. But what if the computer had some help from both infrastructure and other vehicles? Why not start thinking about cheap changes that can be implemented to fix the blind spots and flaws in the self-driving software? If these changes are cheap and easy to implement and would vastly improve the software performance, isn't that worth it for true self-driving to work?
- oliv__ 6y ago
  What happens when the helps disappears, gets obstructed etc...?
- BigJono 6y ago
  When people first started talking about self driving this is what I thought it was going to be. If you want to enter the "self driving zone" your car needs to be equipped with a government approved self driving module, and everything on the roads in that zone is standardised and maintained. It just seems like a problem that's multiple orders of magnitude easier to solve from a technical standpoint.
  - Shank 6y ago
    It’s definitely easier to solve, but who’s going to foot the bill for this stuff? The whole problem is that road conditions conditions are variable. A lot of the time a Tesla FSD system makes a bad decision, that decision would be possible for a human to make. Sure, it’s not probable all the time, but it’s not outside of the realm of possibility. You can always decrease the odds of something bad happening with better road design (and better viability), better lane markings, better signs, etc. This would work for both FSD systems and humans. Yet, terribly unmaintained roads are the norm for a lot of people who are just “used to it.” If you create an FSD zone and outfit it with tons of sensors, why not just fix the road design problems that would benefit humans too?
Geee 6y ago
I'm wondering if there's actually something wrong with the cameras. With good cameras and cutting edge AI, spatial estimation shouldn't be that hard. Traffic with unpredictable moving objects is hard, but finding drivable area in static setting and not hitting on curbs should be easy, right?
BigJono 6y ago
I've got a question. What on earth is with "double parked cars"? Is that an American thing? I've never seen it in my life. How can it be legal to just park in the middle of the road and block traffic?
- lambda_obrien 6y ago
  It's not common for it to be legal except in very specific situations. I don't know if it's American, but they do it here a lot in dense cities for deliveries. It's not a true parking, like for hours, it's for running in and out.
  - kosievdmerwe 6y ago
    It's called "stopping" and not "parking" when you stop (and potentially even turn off your engine and leave the vehicle unattended) to make a delivery or load/unload.
    - lambda_obrien 6y ago
      In many places it's considered parking, legally, anytime you stop and place the car in park.
- colanderman 6y ago
  In parts of Boston you have to basically consider the rightmost lane the "temporary parking" lane. It's pointless to try to drive in it because every block will be two or three cars or vans parked making deliveries or picking people up. The actual parking spots are full of residents' cars which haven't moved since the last street sweeping or snow ban. To top it off, many/most streets are one way, meaning, cars will be "double-parked" in the left lane too. Fortunately our streets are 3-4 lanes wide so there's still room for actual traffic. I used to try to bike on these streets (which are also full of potholes). I'm surprised I'm still alive. Here's a great example on Boylston Street in 2016: https://goo.gl/maps/PQgtntVNYzgq98wcA https://goo.gl/maps/PQgtntVNYzgq98wcA Note the bicyclist up ahead who just had to navigate that. Spin around to see the Dunbar truck double-parked on the left side. Same spot, 2019: https://goo.gl/maps/fb6k6i6HQUizpoKc8 https://goo.gl/maps/fb6k6i6HQUizpoKc8 This time the car's on the opposite side of the street. But spin around to see both a city bus and a huge SUV double-parked at the same spot. (City buses often have to double-park either due to construction or just because some cars parked in the bus area.) Of course when we are lucky to get bike lanes they are often treated as "double parking" lanes. Tickets are handed out but they are treated as the cost of doing business. It's rare to see a delivery truck driving around without a ticket stashed under windshield wiper. Having driven in streets like this most of my life is the reason I feel it is the ultimate hubris for Elon or anyone to think they can solve full self driving without also solving AGI.
frEdmbx 6y ago
More or less so than one of the most dangerous of humanity's practices of driving cars?
villgax 6y ago
Tell me again are all accidents that occur every minute also due to an autonomous car?
- jfoster 6y ago
  Every human with a license is a different & imperfect implementation of autonomy. The result is reflected in a figure known as "the road toll", a euphemism that allows us to think less about the huge amount of damage they cause.
daniel_iversen 6y ago
In the shown video where the car tries to run through a gate, wouldn’t that likely not have been an issue if they used lidar? I know there’s a lot of work on machine vision and that it has lots of potential; but if lidar is even 5% safer, and you’re worried about getting into a car accident wouldn’t you buy anything else than a Tesla when it comes to autonomous driving?
preommr 6y ago
Some really impressive parts, and some fairly scary parts. Also, man, people in oakland seem to honk pretty quickly.
birdyrooster 6y ago
This is an incredible embarrassment.
dreamcompiler 6y ago
I tried FSD in a Model 3 recently. It was quite bad. Biggest problem was that the car wanted to come to a complete stop at green lights, and other cars were behind me wondering WTF the problem was. And it tried to make a right turn from the middle lane without first moving into the clearly-marked, empty right turn lane first. At which point I turned the damn thing off and made no attempt to reengage it. Not only is FSD not worth $10k; it wouldn't be worth any amount of money if Tesla paid me to use it. FSD is going to get somebody killed. Tesla should stick to what they're good at and quit hyping something they're very bad at.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- olau 6y ago
  The FSD beta, while still not ready, is pretty far from Autopilot that everyone has access to right now.
cmarschner 6y ago
And yet, given that Tesla has rolled it out, they probably started to get the largest data stream of expert corrections for a level 4 system to date. This will allow them to make faster progress than any of their competitors.
- HellDunkel 6y ago
  It dont see this as a major advantage. OEMs usually have a lot of test vehicles going around. Nonetheless Tesla seems to have set up the right infrastructur.
- KaiserPro 6y ago
  Its level 2. And they've been having streams of data for _years_ with autopilot. and yet they let this shit out. Look at how incorrectly they've placed the objects, traffic and other things. It has _no_ situational awareness, because it can't see 20% of the objects. Considering that https://wayve.ai/ https://wayve.ai/ can drive around london unaided, tesla is utterly rubbish
haspok 6y ago
I'm not sure why nobody thought of this, but I think self-driving cars should have some special lights or signs that show the world around them that they are self-driving. That would at least lessen the frustration of drivers behind when it is reluctant to turn into oncoming traffic, or acts like a drunken driver.
- trhway 6y ago
  "red flag" laws :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws
ranguna 6y ago
I find this fascinating, it's still in beta but the amount of work thrive) they've done to get here is amazing! Props to Tesla's engineering team, hopefully it'll be a bit better as years go by.
mola 6y ago
People will die, tesla will bring the full might of their legal team to prove somehow that the driver/injured party is at fault because of some disclaimer. Musk will continue to be heralded as humanity saviour. Kenya will be president. Innovation is the new Moloch.
sanbor 6y ago
> All of this testing is being carried out on public roads, for the benefit of the world's most valuable automaker, at basically zero cost. This is an extreme example of "socialize losses, capitalize profits".
cybertronic 6y ago
I have the impression that FSD will be acceptable only when the large majority of other cars on the street also have FSD.
willyt 6y ago
How on earth will this cope with medieval European or Asian cities if it cant cope with a generic American grid city with spacious lanes.
aurelianito 6y ago
I think full self driving will be achieved when infrastructure and laws are adapted to it. We already have the tech to pull it off. A clear example of this is metro line 14 in Paris (it has no driver). We don't need trains, just proper painting of the roads and separate autonomous vehicles from the rest. Trying to use the current infrastructure without any adaptation seems to me a dead road.
twirlock 6y ago
Cool, more Tesla FUD. I was hoping the stock would go on sale again soon.
sega_sai 6y ago
I think any claimed 'full self driving' car should be required to pass a driving test like regular drivers do. It's pretty clear to me that Tesla will not pass that. So question closed, it should not be on the road.
chkaloon 6y ago
For years I've thought full autonomous driving is never going to be practical without an equivalent engineering effort on the road infrastructure side of things. Standardized markings, drive by wire, special AI compatible lanes, etc. Why are we still doing this the hard way?
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > Why are we still doing this the hard way? Scam artists who are really good at their craft milked investors of billions of dollars by selling them on self-driving, and some are desperate to see returns.

444 points by mdbug 6y ago

It’s laughable and potentially dangerous but also just available to 2k people, from whom it is revoked if the interior camera shows they aren’t paying attention. Musk is the first person to say “be careful” when using it. The article is kind of clickbaity. No, Tesla’s FSD is not ready for wide usage. That’s also hardly a secret.

Alupis 6y ago
What's the point of FSD if you have to pay attention? Come on folks... Elon has been claiming for years and years that you'll be able to read a book, or take a nap while in FSD mode, and FSD is "just a year away...". He also claimed all the hardware existed in current-model vehicles and would just be "unlocked" later. The lies pile up, yet people clamor over each other to defend Tesla and Musk.
- kneel 6y ago
  How else are they going to train the model?
  - Alupis 6y ago
    What does training a ML model have to do with telling people their new car will have all the hardware to unlock Level 5 Autonomy - when in fact that turned out to be a lie at best, fraudulent at worst? People plopped down huge money expecting Musk's promises to be true... Here's an article from 2016[1] where Musk makes exactly that claim. From the video embedded in the article, I'd wager we're a long ways away from any Tesla having anything remotely similar to FSD... yet Musk still claims Next Year™[2] I'm at a loss why Tesla even decided to wade into the FSD waters. What was wrong with making a really good EV that people wanted to buy? FSD seems to have become a major distraction for Tesla... now plagued with build quality issues and FSD issues. [1] https://evannex.com/blogs/news/elon-musk-self-driving-hardware-is-here-for-tesla https://evannex.com/blogs/news/elon-musk-self-driving-hardwa... [2] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/elon-musk-full-self-driving-tesla-earnings-call/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/elon-musk-full-self-drivi...
    - kneel 6y ago
      FSD works, it's not better than humans yet. Needs more training.
- yawaworht1978 6y ago
  I agree, it is just a transportation vehicle. Musk is a deceiver, he is not accidentally optimistic with his "forecasts". I will believe fsd or autopilot works properly when musk and his kids do a coast to coast trip in winter from NYC, via Chicago driving through every city at rush hour. Blindfolded with no driver intervention. Then it would deserve a fsd label. There should be no room for double speak on this matter. People say that humans are bad drivers as well. True, if distracted, tired, DUI, inexperienced. Still, no human with sound eyes and a drivers licence would drive like in that video. Unless on the run from police maybe.
  - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
    Even distracted, tired, drunk drivers do much better than this. None of us are perfect, we’ve all driven drunk. How many times you got caught? It’s the fact people don’t get caught or crashed before that they risk it. So really these vehicles are driving worse than humans at their worst. That’s probably why we are underestimating the problem.
    - frosted-flakes 6y ago
      > we’ve all driven drunk. No we haven't. Some people are responsible drivers and don't drive after drinking alcohol. Others don't drink at all. I've driven while tired, but never drunk. Apart from that, I agree with you.
      - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
        True, most of us then. Definitely the majority. I’ve seen people sleeping and driving in bumper to bumper traffic without causing any problems. So there’s something going on in the brain that we’re not getting.
    - yawaworht1978 6y ago
      Good point, too many have operated a car in some unfit state. The remedy for this could be so much simpler than waiting for Musks fantasies to materialize. Breathalizer integrated to car , quick drug test and some device for detecting tiredness which all need to be "ticked" , else the car engine will not crank up or "electro" up. The distraction issue could be minimized as well, albeit with rather invasive methods. All the above plus taxi apps becoming abundant and the common sense to assess when to use a taxi and the fsd software will take a long time to be better than humans. So far, summon does not even work and i remember driving in a Mercedes with lane assist and automatic braking if the distance to vehicle ahead is too small in 2010 or something. Did Tesla even exist at that time or where they at the stage where they used Lotus cars and replaced the drive train and the stickers? The features are not much better than what I have seen in a 2010 Mercer.
- matz1 6y ago
  FSD means the car has the ability to drive itself. It doesn't necessarily mean it can drive perfectly without accident. Thats why you still need to pay attention.
  - alacombe 6y ago
    Come on, of course it does. Don't serve us the old "it's not a bug, it's a feature".
    - matz1 6y ago
      Where has tesla claim/promise that it can drive itself perfectly without accident ?
      - alacombe 6y ago
        Musk himself does.
        matz1 6y ago
        As far as I know he never does. Maybe he said it will be eventually but never promised it can do it right now.
        alacombe 6y ago
        He literally said "you'll be able to sleep in your car on FSD mode".
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
    I have an old 2004 toyota. If I let go of the wheel, it'll drive itself for a bit before I either crash or retake control. I never realized it had FSD. Full self driving means the car drives itself fully.
    - matz1 6y ago
- nickik 6y ago
  So because his predictions were wrong they should just stop and give up? Its not FSD because its beta of the software that will enable that. That's the point, your training the network. The hardware does not seem to be the constraint here. CommaAI does a great job on a processor much, much slower. If their prediction is wrong, they put their own money on the line to upgrade the hardware if need be. I don't think they were lies, Elon usually just says what he believes, often he is right but optimistic, sometimes he is wrong. Clearly he was most wrong about AI but he is right often enough and always speaks his mind. This is what basically everybody that interacts with Elon says, the guy is candid and says what he believes at that moment. This has been reported by people that worked with him and by people like journalist who have interviewed him (recently just in Liftoff book). Tesla has to put most of the money made from the FSD sale into a holding account, as they have not delivered the feature. Generally more generally, I don't think its smart marketing or communication that they are doing.
- jfoster 6y ago
  Have you ever used regular old cruise control? You still have to pay attention to what speed you should be moving at, and it makes it much easier for you to pay attention.
jacques_chester 6y ago
So it's full self-driving, but it's not, like, full self-driving? Musk is "the first to say" a lot of things.
- samatman 6y ago
  Or it's full self-driving but it's like, in beta? If I were participating in a beta test and my phone kept crashing, I could complain about that, but not much, right? beta software does that. Of course a car crashing is a much bigger deal, so, like: pay attention. I'm pessimistic about it ever getting out of beta, personally. But it is what it says on the label. I've seen other, equally cherry-picked videos, where the FSD system has done a competent job of getting from A to B with zero driver intervention.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    Realistically, it's a display of just how far away FSD actually is. The mistakes the car makes in the video are unforgivable and extremely dangerous. > I've seen other, equally cherry-picked videos Cherry picked? Did you watch the video? It's a complete drive through Oakland - not cherry picked snippets.
    - samatman 6y ago
      Yes, cherry picked. I've seen video which is also unedited, and which shows Tesla FSD behaving just fine. It was promoted onto my Twitter feed by people who want to believe FSD is going well. Whereas this one was promoted to the top of HN by people who want to sell clicks promoting the idea that FSD is going poorly. Either one is cherry picking. What wouldn't be cherry picking is watching as much video of FSD driving as you can, collecting statistics on it, trying to make sure your samples are representative (good luck if you aren't Tesla), and writing up a report on what you find. This is, of course, a ton of work.
      - Alupis 6y ago
        Your definition of "cherry picked" seems to differ from the generally accepted definition. The guy that made the video and posted it to youtube is a Tesla "fanboy". I doubt his goal was to paint Tesla's FSD software in a bad light. Yet, in one video, the Tesla nearly hits pedestrians, nearly side swipes other vehicles, drives in the wrong lane, comes to a complete stop in the middle of a busy road, and tried to drive straight through a iron fence. That doesn't look very good to me...

shiftpgdn 6y ago

Road and Track lacks any sort journalistic of credibility and yet again it shows here. For years they would always rate BMW as their absolute top pick (despite huge issues like the e46 chassis failures) while being wined, dined and flown all over the country by BMW's press arm. I would not be surprised if they cherry picked this video because Tesla doesn't "kiss the ring" and buy ads, wine and dine journalists, give sneak previews, etc. I don't even own a Tesla (I do have an Audi E-tron though) or own Tesla stock directly so it's not like I'm a fanboy or anything. I'm just tired of the total failure of journalism in this country.

jeffbee 6y ago
What do your feelings about the magazine really have to do with these events? Just watch the video and comment upon that, if you prefer. It's the primary source.
agency 6y ago
I don't have a horse in this race re: Road and Track but in what sense is this video "cherry picked"? It's a genuine video of Tesla's FSD feature. You can watch it yourself and judge the quality of driving. I don't understand what this BMW business has to do with anything.
- drusepth 6y ago
  OP probably meant "cherry picked" in the sense of R&T picking a purposefully-nonrepresentative video of the "average FSD experience". The video is genuine and real but it shows a completely different experience from pretty much almost every other drive-through FSD video I've seen (which have overall been mostly flawless, with a couple other ones sprinkled in that have also been pretty bad at times). It's important to report on outliers and worst-case scenarios though, especially when the outcome could be death. Obviously this beta has a lot more work to be done before it can graduate into widespread use.
walrus01 6y ago
The youtube video embedded in the article does not appear to have been produced by Road and Track. In fact it looks like a channel of a Tesla fan, it even has referral links in it for Tesla stuff. All they did was find the video and write an article about it. I watched the video. If I had to pick an uncharitable description for just how bad it drives, and how jerky and unpredictable it is, I would say that it drives like a drunk 17 year old.

addicted 6y ago

Why wouldn’t everyone jump at the opportunity to pay Elon Musk money and risk their lives and time so he can get enough data to then make even more billions.

todd3834 6y ago
People probably want to be the first to try something that, if it worked, would change humanity as we know it. Or even just contribute to the progress in their own way. Money is hardly the only motivation for many things, nothing stopping them from owning Tesla stock if they really believed their involvement was going to make billions though.
- barbazoo 6y ago
  How would a self driving car "change humanity as we know it"? Sure it might make travel by car suck less but not in any significant way that would change humanity in any meaningful way. At least not outside of a very narrow bubble we might be a part of.
- addicted 6y ago
  Humanity was supposed to have been changed 4 years ago. It’s fairly obvious that the only thing people will achieve is killing themselves, their loved ones, or innocent bystanders. And Tesla will bring us nowhere closer. Anyways, hasn’t Tesla been far more successful as a Bitcoin marketing company in a week than as a manufacturer of cars for over a decade? If you do want to risk your lives over advancing humanity why not risk it with Waymo which is actually making progress in this arena.
justanotherhn 6y ago
Nobody is asking you to do it so why are you so pressed?
- sundaeofshock 6y ago
  Because Teslas pose a risk to people who did not throw money at Musk. I didn’t sign-up for the beta program, so I’m pretty pissed to be an unwilling participant.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

yawaworht1978 6y ago

How can any regulator watch this without intervention? Tesla should upload this video to their page where the misleading video was "driver would not have to be here" Not saying other manufacturers are worse, but this borders fraudulent advertisement.

avs733 6y ago
You are assuming some has given them the authority to intervene.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  SEC can punish stock scams.
  - mattnewton 6y ago
    Ah yes, the “everything is securities fraud” loophole Matt Levine always talks about.
    - IncRnd 6y ago
      This, specifically, appears to fall into that category.
      - mattnewton 6y ago
        I’m not disagreeing. Here’s an example of the blog I was referencing. It’s interesting how the SEC acts like a catch all bucket of stopping “bad” behavior under this reading of the law. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
        IncRnd 6y ago
        Thank you.

xvector 6y ago

December 2015: "We're going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years." January 2016: "In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land & not blocked by borders, eg you're in LA and the car is in NY" June 2016: "I really consider autonomous driving a solved problem, I think we are less than two years away from complete autonomy, safer than humans, but regulations should take at least another year," Musk said. March 2017: "I think that [you will be able to fall asleep in a tesla] is about two years" March 2018: "I think probably by end of next year [end of 2019] self-driving will encompass essentially all modes of driving and be at least 100% to 200% safer than a person." Nov 15, 2018: "Probably technically be able to [self deliver Teslas to customers doors] in about a year then its up to the regulators" Feb 19 2019: "We will be feature complete full self driving this year. The car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up, take you all the way to your destination without an intervention this year. I'm certain of that. That is not a question mark. It will be essentially safe to fall asleep and wake up at their destination towards the end of next year" April 12th 2019: "I'd be shocked if not next year, at the latest that having the person, having human intervene will decrease safety. DECREASE! (in response to human supervision and adding driver monitoring system)" April 22nd 2019: "We expect to be feature complete in self driving this year, and we expect to be confident enough from our standpoint to say that we think people do not need to touch the wheel and can look out the window sometime probably around the second quarter of next year." April 22nd 2019: “We will have more than one million robotaxis on the road,” Musk said. “A year from now, we’ll have over a million cars with full self-driving, software... everything." May 9th 2019: "We could have gamed an LA/NY Autopilot journey last year, but when we do it this year, everyone with Tesla Full Self-Driving will be able to do it too" Dec 1, 2020: “I am extremely confident of achieving full autonomy and releasing it to the Tesla customer base next year. But I think at least some jurisdictions are going to allow full self-driving next year.” - Elon’s just been repeating the same promise for the over half a decade now. Oldest trick in the book. Disclaimer: I drive a Model 3

ckastner 6y ago
You forgot the best quote, I think, from Autonomy Day in April 2019: “We will have more than one million robotaxis on the road,” Musk said. “A year from now, we’ll have over a million cars with full self-driving, software... everything."

kmonsen 6y ago

While I in general agree with the article, counterpoint is that there have not been any Tesla accidents recently while in autopilot mode I believe? Edit: I guess I was wrong, the accidents are now so common we don’t care anymore. In the beginning they were hyped up a lot.

yawaworht1978 6y ago
I have to object here, yesterday into a parked police car with blue lights on.
xvector 6y ago
It’s because we are scared as fuck with autopilot on and are hyper attentive. My car drives like a drunk teenager and routinely tries to murder me in autopilot.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  This is awful, but it did make me laugh out loud. That said, I have a lot of faith in Papa Musk and his team. I think this nut will be cracked eventually, but its just going to take a lot of time to do so - far more than the timeline he initially proposed, as detailed in your excellent post earlier.
  - hobs 6y ago
    Why would any of this faith be created given the continuous line of bullshit you've been fed?
    - justanotherhn 6y ago
      Because most of his promises came through (eventually)
    - cbozeman 6y ago
      Peter Thiel once said, "Never bet against Elon Musk." Elon said he was going to build a private space launch company. He did. Elon said he was going to build an electric car company. He did. Elon said he was going to build a $35,000 electric car for the masses. He did. Elon said he was going to build a worldwide satellite constellation for Internet access. He is. Rapidly. Everything Elon has said he was going to do, he has. He hasn't always done it at the speed at which he said he would, but he does always get it done. He (meaning his team / company) will eventually develop a fully self-driving car. No, it may not occur at the pace at which he proclaimed, but I have confidence it'll occur.

NaturalPhallacy 6y ago

Two things I think about whenever self driving comes up: 1. Success isn't perfect driving. It's when it drives statistically better than most people. Humans themselves are often terrible drivers ourselves, so why would we hold a robot to a standard we can't even achieve? 2. Ford's customers were right all along: What we want is faster horses.

zanecodes 6y ago
Personally, I would consider success to be when it drives statistically better than _me_, not just _most people_. It really depends on how you choose to aggregate your data; if it's better on average, well, the average crash rate per mile driven for human drivers could be dragged down by a minority of very bad drivers. If that's the case, then if everyone bought a Tesla and used FSD, the total crash rate per mile driven would go up, despite FSD being "statistically better than most people" by that measure.
- NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
  I mean this is what I'm getting at, if by important measures like preventing deaths, injuries, and damage it's statistically better than humans (and there's a whole discussion on how you collect and decide on that data), even if the behavior is weirdly unlike a human driver, is that success? Is that good enough? I'm not asserting it even, just spitballing because this is fascinating to me.
  - zanecodes 6y ago
    Yeah, it's something I'd be interested in reading more about: how do we define "better" in this context? Better for whom: society as a whole? Pedestrians? Drivers of self-driving cars? Passengers of self-driving cars? Drivers of non-self-driving cars? And so on...
    - NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
      Precisely. The impression I got from the video was the car was way more cautious, even more courteous than an overly cautious human drivers would be. It definitely fucked up, but if we define "better" as driving exactly like a skilled human driver, then I expect it to kill exactly as many people as we do. The counter-intuitive advice people are given for things like an animal suddenly leaping into the road is to just hit it, because slamming on the breaks can and has lead to the car's occupants dying for the sake of a squirrel. What do we expect a self driving car to do in that situation? Just imagine the outrage and headlines if a Tesla does what humans are told to do, and kills a dog or cat!

matz1 6y ago

Human also laughably bad and potentially dangerous in driving. Full self driving doesn't mean perfect driving, it will always be continuous improvement.

jacques_chester 6y ago
This is what-aboutism. Humans are not the subject of scrutiny for this video. It was the human who countermanded the dangerous decisions made by the FSD system.
- NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
  No, it's accurately pointing out that perfect driving by an AI is unachievable, if we demand that, then 'self driving' will literally never be a thing. Ever. The standard should be: "Safer than human driving" shouldn't it? And when you realize that humans are already terrible drivers it doesn't seem so reckless to hold AI driving to a realistic, achievable standard instead of an ideology. Another way to look at it: imagine two different human drivers, one is clearly "better" and faster than the other, but wrecks occasionally, but the other is a "bad" driver, but never does. Which is a more desirable model for an AI to emulate?
  - morpheos137 6y ago
    Humans have a semantic model of the world. "AI," so far does not. When human drivers see things they can usually discern what they mean, even with bad and high latency sensor input much faster and better than "AI." The problem to solve with self-driving is not sensor field or latency, of course a machine can do better, rather it is integrating what is sensed into a reasonable plan of action, "AI" demonstrably sucks at this.
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    Has anyone given a Tesla -- or any other autonomous vehicle, for that matter -- a driver's test?
    - 6y ago

naebother 6y ago

Watching the video gives me flashbacks of trying to teach someone to drive. Actually I'd probably prefer that than trying to babysit this headache in traffic. At least then I'd get paid for the hassle.

sobellian 6y ago
Why do I get the feeling that teaching someone (or something) to drive is exactly the idea with the FSD beta?
- naebother 6y ago
  That's probably part of the calculus, but mainly it's to deliver at least something on an over-promised feature. I also wonder how good the training examples are, if they're just using average drivers without any quality control. Like when I'm teaching someone to drive, I'm following traffic laws to the tee. But when I'm doing my day to day driving, it's mostly about optimizing time. There's probably a reason why Waymo hired and trained drivers to teach their algo in a standardized way.
- alea_iacta_est 6y ago
  Yes, like teaching a driver who can't understand complex situations, who is fearless and without conscience. Besides that it's the same.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - xur17 6y ago
    Both fearless and lacking confidence.

S_A_P 6y ago

Oh look another Anti Tesla auto journalist that came from Jalopnik. That is a surprise... And to clarify again, I think Full Self Driving and Autopilot are bad names for driver assist that does not fully self drive or autopilot in the sense that the average layperson would think those terms mean. I dont know if Tesla will ever get to full self driving or autopilot in that respect. I also think that the driver assist as it exists today will prevent entire categories of accidents even if it causes another class of accidents. I think the net difference will be that we are safer on the road because of it. While we are so quick to call out Tesla for the quality of autopilot we forget that at least 50% of the people on the road are distracted and have no such safety net. At least once per drive I sit behind someone who decided that the red light was the perfect time to catch up on their digital life and misses the green light. I see people weaving like a drunk driver and going 20 mph under the speed limit so they can have a buffer zone in front of them while they phone and drive. We need a solution to this as people arent going to stay off their phones...

jowsie 6y ago
Did you watch the video the article is mostly based on? The car trys to drive into several objects several times, other cars, oncoming traffic, literal walls. It's dangerous that they just put this out for people to 'test' while making outrageous claims about how well their tech works.
stefan_ 6y ago
What do you mean? The thing is it's trying to do full self driving. It just happens to steer into people, cars and walls while doing so! There is a big difference between "bad marketing" and shipping wannabe self-driving code.
mmmmmbop 6y ago
More than ten years after ACC and lane keep assist were first broadly introduced, Tesla took those two technologies and rebranded them as Autopilot, conveniently removing the safety feature requiring drivers to keep their hands on the wheel. Now they've released a "full self driving" beta that can not actually fully self drive without killing its passengers, while Waymo has been operating a publicly accessible, fully autonomous taxi service for years now. Last I checked they don't even have safety drivers anymore. And somehow, there are still people who seem to believe that Tesla is pushing the envelope.

rococode 6y ago

The video is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=antLneVlxcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=antLneVlxcs I think it's fair to say that there are definitely some sketchy moments in there. The one that surprised me the most was marked "Near Collision (2)" in the video (12:25). A car really close to the Tesla doesn't seem to be picked up at all until it's too late: https://i.imgur.com/BG0gN2R.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/BG0gN2R.jpeg You can see in the first frame there that on the screen there's nothing in front of the Tesla, it's just the usual white background. But right out the windshield we can see the car is already very close. At the bottom frame which is a split second later, the car is finally detected and we can see the screen now shows the car. But at that point the driver manually intervened with a sharp swerve right as they were about to hit the car. Going frame by frame on Youtube the green box indicating the car was only there for 4 frames before the driver disengaged. I was aware that self driving is far from ready but I didn't know that even basic detection stuff like this is buggy. Double parked cars, people walking in the street, etc, I would expect to be problematic. But this is not really an edge case, it's just a regular car at close range with no obstructions in between...

GhostVII 6y ago
According to what I've seen people saying online, in most of these cases Tesla does identify the vehicle but it identifies it as going in the wrong direction so doesn't think it is a problem for pathfinding. Vehicles going in the opposite direction are marked in yellow on the visualization, so they are hard to see sometimes.
- HanayamaTriplet 6y ago
  The frame grabs of this incident clearly show no vehicle, yellow or not. There are a couple of other yellow objects visible, so this is not a case where it would be hard to see.
  - GhostVII 6y ago
    In the video I actually do see the yellow outline if I really turn up the resolution, it's super faint though, hard to tell if it is there the whole time. Easier to see in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClWlVCwHsI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClWlVCwHsI , at 4:00 the cars are all yellow when they shouldn't be.

GhostVII 6y ago

This [0] is much worse than the video in the article, IMO. It repeatedly tries to pull out in front of cars going 45+ miles an hour, in some cases giving the driver very little time to stop it. For level 5 (what Elon keeps claiming they will have very soon), they need to be able to go tens of thousands of miles without a crash-avoiding human intervention, not 10 minutes. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClWlVCwHsI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClWlVCwHsI

walrus01 6y ago
Wow that's pretty bad. I only watched about half the video - but it appears the Tesla is patiently waiting for the oncoming traffic to clear, same as any human driver would. And then when there is a suitable gap in incoming traffic that any human could accelerate calmly and normally across, to finish the turn correctly, the Tesla just doesn't go. And then in the time that it took to be indecisive, more cars appear and it decides "nope, not time to go now either, keep waiting". Then at 4:05 in the video it does decide to go and almost accelerates right into the path of an oncoming car. At 5:01 in the video it clearly has plenty of time to go and just doesn't move.
- camjohnson26 6y ago
  When learning to drive you have to learn how to have the judgment to commit to a decision, the car seems incapable of that and keeps reevaluating its decisions at every step. The problem is that in these cases you have to commit and accelerate to make it through.
colinmhayes 6y ago
Just watched the first two. I would've gone on those, probably wouldn't trust the ai to accelerate fast enough though.
- mjhoy 6y ago
  Yeah, you missed where it seems to nearly pull out right in front of a truck hauling a boat (~8:27).

dec0dedab0de 6y ago

I haven't really been following self driving closely, but this looks way better than i was expecting. Those streets were very busy, and it mostly did ok. I thought city driving was just off the table, and all the focus was going to be on long haul highway driving.

mempko 6y ago
Would you pay for what you saw in the video?
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  I would pay for a device that would detect and alert me about an FSD-enabled car being nearby so I can keep as much distance between me and them as possible.
- dec0dedab0de 6y ago
  no, but in general I wouldn't pay for any beta test. I would drive around in it and report bugs if they paid me though. (incase anyone from tesla is reading)
Geee 6y ago
That video shows the worst performance of the system. On less busy streets it usually does much better. Highway driving has already been solved. City streets is the missing part from FSD (which is now in beta). Mountain road: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nr9_wBPAHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nr9_wBPAHs Highway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPrsRM2cxGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPrsRM2cxGs
- camjohnson26 6y ago
  Highway driving is not solved.
- mikeyouse 6y ago
  Then again, Teslas repeatedly crash into stationary objects, even on the highway, the latest from this week: https://mobile.twitter.com/MSPFirstDist/status/1372152867612733441/photo/ https://mobile.twitter.com/MSPFirstDist/status/1372152867612...

morpheos137 6y ago

What is fascinating to me about the "self-driving" phenomenon is how many otherwise intelligent people got taken in by the hype.

tablespoon 6y ago
> What is fascinating to me about the "self-driving" phenomenon is how many otherwise intelligent people got taken in by the hype. I've read that "intelligent" people are often easy marks for con artists, because they're often so overconfident about their judgements and opinions.

gibsonf1 6y ago

ML AI gives you perception only, no conceptual understanding. That conceptual awareness of the environment and causality is most definitely a requirement for safe autonomous driving.

dane-pgp 6y ago
Could you give an example of "conceptual understanding" that humans have which is necessary for safe autonomous driving? How does autonomous driving differ from, say, playing poker when it comes to implementing a machine learning solution?
- lovecg 6y ago
  Playing poker is trivial to automate, it’s essentially fully solved. Driving is often surprisingly social. I had many instances where I observed somebody pulling out of a driveway in front of me and something about how their head was turned or whatnot meant I subconsciously “knew” in a split second that they were about to go full speed without looking, so I had to slow down. Stop sign tie-breaking gets complicated. Pedestrian/bike rider eye contact is a thing. “Do I know that they know that I know what their intentions are?” And so on. It’s not as complex as fully solving human communication, but it seems like a huge challenge when mixing human and automated driving on the same roads. But I also don’t know if there were similar transition concerns when horse buggies were being replaced with cars and people had wrong expectations? Maybe we should paint these cars in bright orange and have flashing lights on all the time so that people learn to expect the different behaviour. (The huge Lidar rig on top of some self driving cars works to that purpose)
- gibsonf1 6y ago
  The reason we humans can understand very complex situations with very little information very quickly (such as navigating through traffic) is that we not only perceive that "stuff" is out there and moving, but we also instantly classify that stuff, and in so doing, understand what it can and cant do almost instantly. A large semi truck can only maneuver in certain ways and certain speeds, a car moving erratically likely has a driver that is somehow impaired, a child is fully upredictable and could jump in the street, etc. We know about not just that stuff is out there, but what that stuff is, and how it causally can behave given how things have been behaving up to that point.

grumple 6y ago

As a lead engineer, I would not let software like this out into the wild. The risk is so high and it's not ready. A lot of this would be caught by any engineer driving the car for... 15 minutes. You have thousands of engineers to throw at the problem - why can't you stay in a lane while turning? Why can't you read turn arrows in the road? Both of these are extremely fixable problems. Why is the car stopping in the middle of nowhere?

morpheos137 6y ago
>Why is the car stopping in the middle of nowhere? garbage collection?
jeffbee 6y ago
This is the part I can't understand. You release software to dogfood, public beta, etc when you want to get more feedback and you've exhausted the ability of the previous tier to provide it. You wouldn't release software to dogfood if the programmers on the project can readily find defects in a minute or two, you go to dogfood if the engineers use it all the time and can't find new defects. The only reason for this FSD software to be in the wild is it is part of the larger pump and dump scam.
- matz1 6y ago
  It would take too long, on the contrary you want to release it as early as possible. It need to learn from real life situation. To get a true real life data you have to... release it to real life situation.
sebirocs 6y ago
I think is because they're going for a full machine learning approach, the neural network tries to learn the best solution but is unable to receive simple instructions like "go in a straight line"
- jowday 6y ago
  They're not going for a full ML approach. That's just more Elon marketing language. Tesla reverse engineers have gotten their hands on the FSD beta and inspected the internals - they use ML for perception and scene understanding, but all of that information feeds into traditional robotics prediction, planning, and pathfinding algorithms.

mtlynch 6y ago

For most of the video, I felt like "laughably bad" was an exaggeration. The car made poor questionable moves, but it seemed to err on the side of being too cautious and too protective of pedestrians. The last two minutes were really shocking. The car would have crashed several times had the driver not been extremely vigilant. Tesla should not be testing this on the general public.

notJim 6y ago
Whether it's laughable or not is a judgment call, but as a frequent pedestrian and cyclist, cars erratically swerving all over the road like that is not what I would call protective.
- tiborsaas 6y ago
  I agree, protecting the cyclists should have higher priority considering the damage that a crash can cause.
camjohnson26 6y ago
It stops in the middle of the road, drives into the back of parked cars, shakes back and forward, cuts across lanes, stays out of its lane, misreads road signs, pulls in front of cars, gets honked at repeatedly, drives on the wrong side of the road, and drives so slow and unsure that other cars have no idea what to expect it to do. It isn’t only laughably bad it’s absurd that it hasn’t been banned and Tesla forced to issue refunds.

xedeon 6y ago

https://twitter.com/WholeMarsBlog/status/1370974296730824704?s=20 https://twitter.com/WholeMarsBlog/status/1370974296730824704...

Animats 6y ago

Cruise has some long videos of self driving in San Francisco. It's far better than this. What's striking is watching the system's screen vs the real world, and seeing Tesla not detecting important things. Tesla's big problem is simply that they are not very good at building a 3D model of the world around their vehicles. They try to do it on vision alone, and, after over five years, they still can't do that reliably.

peripitea 6y ago
I don't follow this too closely but are you referring to company-released videos? Seems unfair to compare a compilation of bad incidents from one of many (thousands?) of users of Tesla's system to one curated by the company releasing it. I've seen a few videos of the Tesla doing 15+ minute drives without intervention too.
jy3 6y ago
> It's far better than this. I don't know what you're referring to. Any links?
HellDunkel 6y ago
I would be very surprised if Cruise had a better 3d rep. It is probably far worse and that is why they are hiding it.
- jtsiskin 6y ago
  They have a lidar. They already have an accurate 3D rep from the sensors
  - HellDunkel 6y ago
    They have a startup and an unfulfilled promise. Their ADAS supercruise has no 3d view. Their self driving vehicle is no competition to tesla.
    - ra7 6y ago

qbasic_forever 6y ago

Putting the near-misses and safety issues aside, this looks absolutely maddening and horrible to drive even in the best conditions. Just watching it sit there staring at a plainly empty and clear crosswalk with a green light, the loud blips and alarms as cars get close, etc. would make me so anxious to be behind the wheel.

vincentmarle 6y ago

People tell me I'm crazy when I tell them I always try to avoid driving near Tesla cars on the highway, but it seems my suspicions were correct.

heavyset_go 6y ago
The number of people that I've seen off in their own worlds doing their makeup or tapping away on their phone using Tesla's Autopilot was reason enough for me to avoid those cars while driving. I've seen someone using Autopilot nearly drive another car off the road when lane switching before, and the driver was just nodding off as if nothing happened. Tesla's FSD scares the absolute shit out of me.

pengaru 6y ago

I'd appreciate it if the NHTSA and DOT would do their fucking jobs and halt operation of these semi-autonomous 5000lb+ hazardous bots on public roads. Us non-Tesla drivers have not signed up to be part of your volunteer risk-taking beta-testing team, go do this shit on private roads.

pnt12 6y ago
Yeah, I'm surprised this is allowed. It's risky for the owner, who opts in but may be mislead about the current accuracy of the model, but even worse, it's dangerous to all 3rd party drivers, ciclists and pedestrians. It's basically driving like a drunk guy.
- animal_spirits 6y ago
  I've contacted my representatives about this, I believe that all of us who are concerned should do so as well.

karmicthreat 6y ago

The worst thing about this system is it doesn't make a decision and stick with it. It just kind of meanders between lanes. Then when it realizes it is going in the wrong direction it does the wrong thing to get back on track. It should just follow a turn lane and renavigate.

oliv__ 6y ago
Agreed. Interesting to reflect on what us human will do instinctively vs what the computer comes up with.
frongpik 6y ago
I don't get what's so difficult about self driving. The car just needs to show a path it's going to follow during the next ten seconds and stick with it. Only when the path appears wrong, the driver takes control. This let's the driver know how the car sees the road. Unless the self driving saga has a different goal: transportation as a service. This is where the money are and this is where full auto driving is a necessity.
- camjohnson26 6y ago
  What’s so difficult about intelligent language models, you just pick the next few words the model will say.
  - karmicthreat 6y ago
    Yea, really. What's so difficult about X usually means you have not thought about the problem enough. What's so difficult about making an app? You mean other than having to have some understanding of 20 years of tech its built on top of?
- sfjailbird 6y ago
  > The car just needs to show a path it's going to follow during the next ten seconds It could even project this onto the wind screen. Some new cars do a neat trick with perspective adjustment so the projection appears 'flat' even on a tilted wind screen.

cblconfederate 6y ago

Well it might be useful if you are a driving instructor cause it acts like a bad student

xwolfi 6y ago

You don't say ! Electric Jesus would have exagerated ? Probably a one off ...

kwdc 6y ago

I'm of the opinion that if the auto-pilot was a real driver, I'd like that "driver": 1) put into the passenger seat and required to simply observe, 2) sent back to school to learn the road rules, 3) re-sit the test to confirm knowledge and re-sit practical. I also noticed a few sudden stops from the way the guys lurched forwards at stops. Getting rear-ended due to pointless sudden stops is a fail as well. Its not ready for use. From what I've just seen from that video I'd be de-rating that "driver" from full license back to probationary or more realistically, right back to learner. I'm glad there was a human at the wheel.

ohiovr 6y ago

If a company could produce a computer that could think with the complexity of a 3 year old that would be revolutionary. To put 3 year olds behind the wheel of 1 gigajoule of kinetic energy would also be revolutionary.

camjohnson26 6y ago
Yes recreating life would be revolutionary. Worth remembering that science has never created life from non life. We’ve manipulated DNA and cloned but never created from scratch even the simplest life forms. We shouldn’t assume that recreating human brains in computers is an unavoidable eventuality, computers are different than brains.

bit_logic 6y ago

There's a saying in software, you throw away the first version. The main idea is that when you start on something, you don't know what you don't know. The labor of the first version allows you to learn the domain, the limits, edge cases, and what you need to do. Then the second version starts on a much better foundation. At this point, many teams (Waymo, Tesla, Uber, etc.) have been working on this for years. And there must have been times when the engineers thought, this would work so much better if only... Maybe it's time to gather these thoughts and sort them by low effort/high reward. For example, if all cars had a cheap sticker indicating forward vs back, would that improve self-driving performance by a lot? It wouldn't be that hard to get car manufacturers to add a sticker somewhere. Or what about traffic lights? Maybe adding a cheap light or sensor to it would vastly improve self-driving performance. Or those road reflectors, can they get some minor changes to help the self-driving software? It doesn't seem likely that level 5 or even level 4 will happen when self-driving is literally defined as replacing what a human driver would do. But what if the computer had some help from both infrastructure and other vehicles? Why not start thinking about cheap changes that can be implemented to fix the blind spots and flaws in the self-driving software? If these changes are cheap and easy to implement and would vastly improve the software performance, isn't that worth it for true self-driving to work?

oliv__ 6y ago
What happens when the helps disappears, gets obstructed etc...?
BigJono 6y ago
When people first started talking about self driving this is what I thought it was going to be. If you want to enter the "self driving zone" your car needs to be equipped with a government approved self driving module, and everything on the roads in that zone is standardised and maintained. It just seems like a problem that's multiple orders of magnitude easier to solve from a technical standpoint.
- Shank 6y ago
  It’s definitely easier to solve, but who’s going to foot the bill for this stuff? The whole problem is that road conditions conditions are variable. A lot of the time a Tesla FSD system makes a bad decision, that decision would be possible for a human to make. Sure, it’s not probable all the time, but it’s not outside of the realm of possibility. You can always decrease the odds of something bad happening with better road design (and better viability), better lane markings, better signs, etc. This would work for both FSD systems and humans. Yet, terribly unmaintained roads are the norm for a lot of people who are just “used to it.” If you create an FSD zone and outfit it with tons of sensors, why not just fix the road design problems that would benefit humans too?

Geee 6y ago

I'm wondering if there's actually something wrong with the cameras. With good cameras and cutting edge AI, spatial estimation shouldn't be that hard. Traffic with unpredictable moving objects is hard, but finding drivable area in static setting and not hitting on curbs should be easy, right?

BigJono 6y ago

I've got a question. What on earth is with "double parked cars"? Is that an American thing? I've never seen it in my life. How can it be legal to just park in the middle of the road and block traffic?

lambda_obrien 6y ago
It's not common for it to be legal except in very specific situations. I don't know if it's American, but they do it here a lot in dense cities for deliveries. It's not a true parking, like for hours, it's for running in and out.
- kosievdmerwe 6y ago
  It's called "stopping" and not "parking" when you stop (and potentially even turn off your engine and leave the vehicle unattended) to make a delivery or load/unload.
  - lambda_obrien 6y ago
    In many places it's considered parking, legally, anytime you stop and place the car in park.
colanderman 6y ago
In parts of Boston you have to basically consider the rightmost lane the "temporary parking" lane. It's pointless to try to drive in it because every block will be two or three cars or vans parked making deliveries or picking people up. The actual parking spots are full of residents' cars which haven't moved since the last street sweeping or snow ban. To top it off, many/most streets are one way, meaning, cars will be "double-parked" in the left lane too. Fortunately our streets are 3-4 lanes wide so there's still room for actual traffic. I used to try to bike on these streets (which are also full of potholes). I'm surprised I'm still alive. Here's a great example on Boylston Street in 2016: https://goo.gl/maps/PQgtntVNYzgq98wcA https://goo.gl/maps/PQgtntVNYzgq98wcA Note the bicyclist up ahead who just had to navigate that. Spin around to see the Dunbar truck double-parked on the left side. Same spot, 2019: https://goo.gl/maps/fb6k6i6HQUizpoKc8 https://goo.gl/maps/fb6k6i6HQUizpoKc8 This time the car's on the opposite side of the street. But spin around to see both a city bus and a huge SUV double-parked at the same spot. (City buses often have to double-park either due to construction or just because some cars parked in the bus area.) Of course when we are lucky to get bike lanes they are often treated as "double parking" lanes. Tickets are handed out but they are treated as the cost of doing business. It's rare to see a delivery truck driving around without a ticket stashed under windshield wiper. Having driven in streets like this most of my life is the reason I feel it is the ultimate hubris for Elon or anyone to think they can solve full self driving without also solving AGI.

frEdmbx 6y ago

More or less so than one of the most dangerous of humanity's practices of driving cars?

villgax 6y ago

Tell me again are all accidents that occur every minute also due to an autonomous car?

jfoster 6y ago
Every human with a license is a different & imperfect implementation of autonomy. The result is reflected in a figure known as "the road toll", a euphemism that allows us to think less about the huge amount of damage they cause.

daniel_iversen 6y ago

In the shown video where the car tries to run through a gate, wouldn’t that likely not have been an issue if they used lidar? I know there’s a lot of work on machine vision and that it has lots of potential; but if lidar is even 5% safer, and you’re worried about getting into a car accident wouldn’t you buy anything else than a Tesla when it comes to autonomous driving?

preommr 6y ago

Some really impressive parts, and some fairly scary parts. Also, man, people in oakland seem to honk pretty quickly.

birdyrooster 6y ago

This is an incredible embarrassment.

dreamcompiler 6y ago

I tried FSD in a Model 3 recently. It was quite bad. Biggest problem was that the car wanted to come to a complete stop at green lights, and other cars were behind me wondering WTF the problem was. And it tried to make a right turn from the middle lane without first moving into the clearly-marked, empty right turn lane first. At which point I turned the damn thing off and made no attempt to reengage it. Not only is FSD not worth $10k; it wouldn't be worth any amount of money if Tesla paid me to use it. FSD is going to get somebody killed. Tesla should stick to what they're good at and quit hyping something they're very bad at.

deleted 6y ago
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olau 6y ago
The FSD beta, while still not ready, is pretty far from Autopilot that everyone has access to right now.

cmarschner 6y ago

And yet, given that Tesla has rolled it out, they probably started to get the largest data stream of expert corrections for a level 4 system to date. This will allow them to make faster progress than any of their competitors.

HellDunkel 6y ago
It dont see this as a major advantage. OEMs usually have a lot of test vehicles going around. Nonetheless Tesla seems to have set up the right infrastructur.
KaiserPro 6y ago
Its level 2. And they've been having streams of data for _years_ with autopilot. and yet they let this shit out. Look at how incorrectly they've placed the objects, traffic and other things. It has _no_ situational awareness, because it can't see 20% of the objects. Considering that https://wayve.ai/ https://wayve.ai/ can drive around london unaided, tesla is utterly rubbish

haspok 6y ago

I'm not sure why nobody thought of this, but I think self-driving cars should have some special lights or signs that show the world around them that they are self-driving. That would at least lessen the frustration of drivers behind when it is reluctant to turn into oncoming traffic, or acts like a drunken driver.

trhway 6y ago
"red flag" laws :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws

ranguna 6y ago

I find this fascinating, it's still in beta but the amount of work thrive) they've done to get here is amazing! Props to Tesla's engineering team, hopefully it'll be a bit better as years go by.

mola 6y ago

People will die, tesla will bring the full might of their legal team to prove somehow that the driver/injured party is at fault because of some disclaimer. Musk will continue to be heralded as humanity saviour. Kenya will be president. Innovation is the new Moloch.

sanbor 6y ago

> All of this testing is being carried out on public roads, for the benefit of the world's most valuable automaker, at basically zero cost. This is an extreme example of "socialize losses, capitalize profits".

cybertronic 6y ago

I have the impression that FSD will be acceptable only when the large majority of other cars on the street also have FSD.

willyt 6y ago

How on earth will this cope with medieval European or Asian cities if it cant cope with a generic American grid city with spacious lanes.

aurelianito 6y ago

I think full self driving will be achieved when infrastructure and laws are adapted to it. We already have the tech to pull it off. A clear example of this is metro line 14 in Paris (it has no driver). We don't need trains, just proper painting of the roads and separate autonomous vehicles from the rest. Trying to use the current infrastructure without any adaptation seems to me a dead road.

twirlock 6y ago

Cool, more Tesla FUD. I was hoping the stock would go on sale again soon.

sega_sai 6y ago

I think any claimed 'full self driving' car should be required to pass a driving test like regular drivers do. It's pretty clear to me that Tesla will not pass that. So question closed, it should not be on the road.

chkaloon 6y ago

For years I've thought full autonomous driving is never going to be practical without an equivalent engineering effort on the road infrastructure side of things. Standardized markings, drive by wire, special AI compatible lanes, etc. Why are we still doing this the hard way?

heavyset_go 6y ago
> Why are we still doing this the hard way? Scam artists who are really good at their craft milked investors of billions of dollars by selling them on self-driving, and some are desperate to see returns.