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Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

100 points by schintan 5y ago

dreamcompiler 5y ago
Maybe the problem is that Musk keeps thinking the Autonomy scale is linear; it's not. Level 3 Autonomy is 10x as hard as Level 2; Level 4 is 10x as hard as level 3, etc. I don't know if 10 is the right multiplier here, but the point is the difficulty is exponential. Musk's engineers know this but for whatever reason he can't or won't understand it.
throwawayAI39 5y ago
If you are looking for some level-headedness on the topics of AI, self-driving etc, here are some recommendations: Book suitable even for lay people, written by someone who has been working for years in this field: [1] Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell People to follow: [2] https://twitter.com/missy_cummings/ https://twitter.com/missy_cummings/ [3] https://twitter.com/rodneyabrooks/ https://twitter.com/rodneyabrooks/ [4] https://www.twitter.com/MelMitchell1/ https://www.twitter.com/MelMitchell1/ Edit: For criticism of Elon Musk and/or Tesla: [5] https://www.elonmusk.today/ https://www.elonmusk.today/ [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lawsuits_involving_Tesla,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lawsuits_involving_Tes.... [8] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/surely-we-can-do-better-than-elon-musk https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/surely-we-can-do-bett... [9] https://troll.tv/videos/watch/54bc7bd0-8691-4359-aa7d-dc5148350ff3 https://troll.tv/videos/watch/54bc7bd0-8691-4359-aa7d-dc5148...
xyzzy21 5y ago
Yes. We already knew this. Elon is a marvelous marketer and salesman. He's frequently MISIDENTIFIED as the new Edison or Tesla. He's NOT that - both of those men were insanely technical and enough so the jump into technical problems and add value to work being done by their employees. Musk is not that. He's had very little to do with any technical aspects of any of his companies. But there's been plenty of PR spin to imply the opposite. That spin has always been a lie. I've had Silicon Valley bosses just like him. Our recent president is someone with the same personality just with fewer IQ points. But the same otherwise.
- defterGoose 5y ago
  I mean, he's got a physics degree and can speak knowlegeably about the domains he's in without reading off a script; that's more than you can say about the majority of CEOs in this day and age. He may have moved away from the nitty gritty day-to-day problem solving, but that's par for the course when you're heading successful companies. Disclaimer: I don't like the dude, he's an edgelord jerk.
- DreamScatter 5y ago
  Unfortunately, musk wants to present himself as if he is some kind of Tony Stark character like in the iron man movie. He also says the he doesn't care about college degrees, but I bet that all the people at SpaceX have the necessary degrees and are not drop outs, so that's probably also not really true about him either. The Tesla car company was also not founded by him but by someone else who actually engineered a car. I will give him some credit for SpaceX though, I think the company is doing well, but I doubt he is directly involved in engineering.
spamalot159 5y ago
I've been acquainted with a number of engineers at various autonomous vehicle companies and they are some of the most reserved people when it comes to the reality of autonomous driving. Many of them going so far as to say they would never use one for themselves now or in the near future. I think when domain experts speak up like this we should listen. The autonomous vehicle technology seems like it has a long way to go.
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  FWIW, I work in AV eng/research and have never heard someone say this. Most of the people I know in the space are pretty clear-headed about how dangerous human driving is. We are generally less optimistic about timing, but that was more true a couple years ago (before all the big cos' 2019 deadlines got pushed back) than it is now. Current timelines seem like an achievable challenge to me, and I don't think I'm unusually optimistic. Musk's timeline pronouncements, as usual, just aren't taken seriously (and imo hurt the industry's credibility). I like the guy and respect what he's done, but for whatever reason he says really out-there things that are best ignored until he shows the receipts.
  - dreamcompiler 5y ago
    Two things can be true at the same time: 1. Human-driven cars are dangerous. 2. Autonomous driving (currently) is dangerous. AD solves some human driving problems (like inattention) but introduces new ones (like driving under trucks).
    - wutbrodo 5y ago
      Obviously so, and this doesn't contradict anything I said. But the types of people who work on AVs are quantitative enough to understand that these magnitudes can differ, and are able to process that difference instead of waving them away as "both dangerous" and sticking with the status quo out of blind habit. Almost literally every decision trades off one danger for another: to pick an adjacent example, airbags introduce dangers that are different from the ones they solve. And yet, "airbags have dangers! Take them out of your car" is a woefully incomplete understanding of the risk landscape, driven more by our Neanderthal brain's superstition than our Homo Sapiens reasoning about risk. That sort of magical thinking is a hurdle that every shift in the risk landscape needs to overcome ("what if vaccines have microchips in them??"). This is, of course, dependent on actual comparative safety stats, but I've yet to hear a safety argument against taking a Waymo ride over an Uber in Chandler[1]. If the same level of transparency and rigor is used in more complex environments, I'd take a cruise/waymo car in sf too (once they launch). [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/10/30/waymo-data-shows-incredible-safety-record--they-should-deploy-today/?sh=111884c53829 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/10/30/waymo-...
superkuh 5y ago
Autonomous cars might be possible for climates without snow but they'll never be capable of driving with humans in winter till they start making the same intuitive mistakes as humans given sparse data (complete snow covering). The problem with any non-vision based location system to compensate for covered roads is that it isn't what humans use. In winter in cold climates sometimes the roads are covered with snow for days to weeks and road margins drift for the entire season. Humans just form new emergent lanes. These lanes often aren't the "correct" lanes that non-vision based absolute position would find. And they're very difficult to detect with computer, or even human, vision. Having one set of laws of autonomous cars in arizona and another for minnesota will lead to a lot of problems.
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  There are already limitations by road condition. This level of control over the operating environment is part of why so many services are targeting robotaxis as their initial product.
  - shagie 5y ago
    Would a robotaxi in Detroit, Chicago, or Minneapolis in the winter be viable? I'm thinking about those roads where it's nominally a two lane in each direction, but the snow banks make it a 1.5 lane in each direction (if that). Where one doesn't start into the intersection when the light turns green - to give any cars that have the need to slide through. And likewise the ability for the robotaxi to realize "well, I've got no traction - guess I'm going to slide through this intersection and the left turn is impossible - I'm going straight through." A robotaxi in LA, SF... ok. Pheonix - sure. But I've yet to see any examples of a self driving vehicle able to drive in winter condition roads in the midwest.
    - wutbrodo 5y ago
      That's my point. Presumably Detroit doesn't have winter driving conditions in the summer, in which case robotaxis are feasible seasonally, or when there hasn't been rain/freezing conditions for X # of days, etc. Determining a bound on operating conditions is a far easier problem than making a car that drives itself. Before launching in any city, you have to validate that you can handle the idiosyncrasies of its driving environment. Perhaps the business side decides that Detroit isn't worth launching in, but <other snowy city> is drivable 200 days/yr and that's enough to warrant launching an intermittently-available service. My ultimate point is that AVs can cover a lot of ground from a business perspective without getting to full universal-availability. This is helped along by a combination of validating each city independently[1], limiting operating conditions, and safe-fallback teleoperation for occasional use. Validating a 2021 AV in a snowy environment isn't an inherently harder problem than validating a 2016 AV in a normal environment (with a safety driver), and a similar approach will be applicable. [1] Presumably less and less narrowly each time
rvz 5y ago
And we all knew that this 'Level 5' full self driving BS from Elon Musk, was actually and 'admittedly' Level 2. [0] I think that joke should have been reserved for Saturday night live. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932616 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932616
S_A_P 5y ago
This is my single biggest beef with Elon and Tesla. From the jump I think that the name overstates the ability of the vehicles. I think his tweets have been consistently optimistic regarding timelines to the point of hyperbole. I agree that autonomy is a worthwhile goal, but I think the real selling point of a Tesla is that they were until recently the best electric car you can buy. That still may be the case today but others are catching up. To me it would be a shame if autopilot NHTSA investigation brought Tesla down or a giant class action by everyone who plopped down 10 grand to get full autonomy and it never shows up.
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  I think it's the best car you can buy, electric or otherwise. That's why it baffles me that Musk feels the need to consistently lie about autonomy, because the car is already great without it, and the "intelligent cruise control" which the car does have is convenient and as good as anybody else's. It's as if Apple made the best computers--which some people think they still do--but Tim Cook was tweeting every day about how the MacBook Pro can solve the halting problem. No it can't; of course it can't. Why would you continue to drag down your company's good name by lying like this?
  - azinman2 5y ago
    Ego? Surrounded by yes-men (I’m guessing)?
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    I don't think Musk is intentionally lying about autonomy, this is just his worldview. He truly believes that strong AI is just around the corner and it poses an existential threat to the human race, and by the same token, of course we'll have full self-driving cars as soon as just a few small kinks are ironed out. These beliefs stem from a very strong worldview, and are not attempts at stock price manipulation or some kind of investor scam. Musk is convinced that there isn't a very big difference between the human brain and the tech inside GPUs combined with some matrix multiplication and training data, and these differences, to the degree they exist, are easily bridged with a bit of software. That's a core element of his beliefs. What is more interesting is why he hasn't learned that his worldview is so fundamentally wrong. And for that, I would say that it's hard for very rich and successful people to acknowledge they are so completely wrong about important things.
paulcole 5y ago
I still can’t get over how deceptive the marketing was on the Autopilot page on Tesla.com >Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars >All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver. How was it possible to know in advance what hardware will be required?
- TylerLives 5y ago
  What would they need the better hardware for?
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    If they haven't achieved full self driving, how could they know, and hence claim, to have the necessary hardware?
  - lawn 5y ago
    Better sensors, which has already been one of the reasons for some of Tesla's self-driving crashes.
  - paulcole 5y ago
    I don’t know, but Tesla took that text off their Autopilot page in late 2019, so maybe something changed…
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  >How was it possible to know in advance what hardware will be required? I suspect that most of the hardware is the ability of a computer to drive the car. Steering/throttle/braking inputs for example. It could be that what you mean by 'hardware' is some combination of intelligence and sensor system.
  - paulcole 5y ago
    Regardless of what I might mean by “hardware”, is there any way Tesla should be stating as fact that the cars coming off the line in 2019 (when I took that quote from) need no additional hardware to accomplish something that is years (if not decades) away from becoming reality?
v8dev123 5y ago
Elon used to be good but now has become corrupt. My sources says he is addicted to Cocaine .. Such as this [1] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279270 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279270
injb 5y ago
This is basically hearsay. The claim in the title is based on this: "“Elon’s tweet does not match engineering reality per CJ,” Miguel Acosta, chief of the California DMV’s autonomous vehicles branch, wrote in the memo" So someone in the CA BMV claims a Tesla engineer (CJ) said this, but doesn't quote them, and the article doesn't elaborate on it. Maybe it's true but they're clearly reaching a bit with the title.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
I think the big issue is that if you really want autonomous driving over any road, you will likely either need sensors beyond vision or some AGI level model of the world. For example, on the highway, truck infront of you drops some debris. What do you do? It can be dangerous to suddenly swerve or brake, but also dangerous to hit something. What you do In real life is quickly evaluate. You are looking at the object that fell and estimating how deformable it is. For example, if it looks like a wad of paper, you would continue on. Or you estimate if you have clearance based o how big it looks and your mental model of your car’s clearance. You also look at the traffic beside you and behind you to evaluate risk of braking or swerving. You are also doing object recognition. If it is an empty box, you may be ok hitting it, but if it is an infant car seat that fell, you will brake hard/ swerve even if it is dangerous. Also, for people who bring up the safety of human drivers, one thing to consider is the safety of a hybrid approach where the human is still in charge but you have safety features like lane keeping, blind spot monitoring, automatic emergency braking, etc. That hybrid approach may be actually safer than either only human, or only computer driving.
- danans 5y ago
  > You are also doing object recognition. Object recognition has been a part of autonomous driving systems for a very long time. The difference between a stroller and a piece of paper is pretty well understood by these systems. > For example, on the highway, truck infront of you drops some debris. > What do you do? The answer is to always keep a large safety margin between you and the vehicle in front of you when traveling at high speeds, so you have time to react and take the safest course of action. Seconds make a huge difference in this scenario and it's easy to get them. No autonomous system is going to be hugging a truck bumper, but rather is going to always maintain a significantly greater safety distance than an aggressive human driver would. > If it is an empty box, you may be ok hitting it, You can never be sure that the box is empty, so I'd recommend always swerving to avoid.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  > I think the big issue is that if you really want autonomous driving over any road, you will likely either need sensors beyond vision or some AGI level model of the world. Somehow people manage without this. Without any real knowledge of the problems the engineers are hitting, my current take is that to produce a reasonably good autonomous driving system requires killing some people. Slowly adding features will send more information to the mothership and they'll have to push the envelope to learn enough.
0xdeadbeefbabe 5y ago
A talking engineer?
edf13 5y ago
Engineer says Sales Person overstated features... Isn’t this the norm in any company? It’s always a struggle to keep a lid on sales promises!
hodder 5y ago
Fake it til you make it is fine with startups, however with publicly traded securities it is fraud. Elon Musk gets away with a lot of things that most capital markets participants would be imprisoned for. I'd certainly be in jail if I did half the BS he does on an almost daily basis. Yet, this fake it til you make model has enabled reflexivity in the growth and stock price allowing Tesla and other Musk ventures to grow and accomplish a lot with amazing speed. An interesting study in Soros' theories. Turns out that lying about timelines, product capability (even existence), liquidity, buyouts, crypto pump and dumps, and defamation is heavily rewarded by the market. Particularly if your fame, past accomplishments, and world savior persona makes you immune to prosecution.
- ObserverNeutral 5y ago
  > Yet, this fake it til you make model has enabled reflexivity in the growth and stock price allowing Tesla and other Musk ventures to grow and accomplish a lot with amazing speed. But once you are a company that size the goal is to grow and accomplish amazing stuff but with great margins. Tesla has essentially arrived at destination with regards to MarketCap, it won't become a 5 trillion dollar company. Nobody will. There is such a thing as the Sherman Act and Antitrust. Tesla still lags behind in every other metric (especially margins) compared to similar companies of that size. Seems to me Musk will have to work a whole lot just deliver and thus mantain the current valuation and his level of net worth right now. Alternatively he could get to 5 trillions by promising new products at an increasingly higher rate and thus avoiding the antitrust laws. Those laws were written for a company which actually has a market dominance, not a company which has a stock market dominance based on the promises of the CEO and people believing in it and buying the stock. I think from what we've seen, he's going in this direction exactly, he'll keep inflating the bubble that's for sure. He only has one gear
- fitzie 5y ago
  this is how a narrative replaces unbiased journalism. the underlying email chain shows this conversation is regarding the full self driving "beta" that Tesla is slowly releasing. while it is clear that the regulators are concerned about customer confusion, they are more concerned that Tesla is releasing capabilities beyond what was explained to regulators (I.e. level 2). the reporter is able to twist this into a whistleblower like headline and use language that completely distorts the nature of the underlying conversation. readers can then opine on how they like or dislike Tesla/elon and ignore relevant facts. Tesla has shown that it is taking increasing steps to ensure people are using fsd responsibly. while autopilot used used simplistic sensors to gauge operator attentiveness, fsd uses cameras to watch to driver. as elon has said, with autopilot, the company has data that proves that it reduces the risk of accident. he has said there is a moral argument that it is immoral to wait until it is "complete" before making it widely available. this evidence is regularly ignored by people talking about the dangers of Tesla/elon automation claims.
userulluipeste 5y ago
When ADAS systems come into play, the primary concern is who's going to shoulder the blame when things fail. This autonomous driving thing is no simple nor incremental improvement, this is an overhaul in our current structure of liability. So far, with a human driving, when things go awry, blame can be easily assigned, it's simple and case can be closed. When we introduce total absolution of the former party in charge, simeone else has to step in. The only one with any control here is the producer of the vehicle, yet the scope of responsibility is far too large for anyone at the traditional levels of rigor. The consequence is that ever increasing levels of safety requirements get demanded from the self-driving technology, enough to make it at any time both insuficiently mature and an even more desired thing for how much it has to offer in order to cover the said requirements. Mr. Musk seem like a smart man to not be aware of this, which makes me think about the moral hazard of his tweets.
- Geee 5y ago
  Liability is the difference between L2 and L5 systems. Most people don't understand that Tesla FSD will operate in L2 mode until it's 99.999999% reliable. Until then, you'll have to keep your hands on the wheel and accept that you are liable, even if the car drives autonomously.
- lsaferite 5y ago
  I'm assuming you are talking about when we reach level 4+ right? Anything below that is clearly still in the realm of driver responsibility. Level 4 is really where the large grey area will live, because level 5 will certainly require moving that liability to the system manufacturer. Just a minor nit, "ADAS systems" is redundant.
adamqureshi 5y ago
This is exactly why Tesla should rename full self driving to FUTURE SELF DRIVING. Because thats exactly what it feels like. there should be no mis-understanding. :-)
johnthuss 5y ago
I'm hopeful that we'll get self driving capability in the next few decades, but pre-selling this feature to customers before it was even CLOSE to ready was criminal.
akshayB 5y ago
This is how marketing works, all companies do this Apple -- best iPhone ever so what happens to phone I purchased last year (reality - there a decent upgrades) IBM Watson -- commercials looks like you can layoff 20% of employees as this things can work like wonders (reality - its not that smart) Tesla -- Autopilot is not 100% auto pilot human supervision is needed at times. We are far away from 100% autonomous vehicles. I wish they selected a better name for this feature.
- jeffreyrogers 5y ago
  There is obviously a qualitative difference in the claims Tesla (and other Musk companies) have made and standard marketing claims of most companies.
xwdv 5y ago
Why can’t robo taxis just be human taxi drivers at a desk remotely driving a vehicle around?
- bluGill 5y ago
  Latency matters, as does reliability. If the network can go down for any reason you cannot do this.
k33n 5y ago
I love reading the opinions that people who have done nothing and will do nothing for the world have on Elon. Imagine if you spent your energy doing something good or interesting instead of writing lengthy essays criticizing a guy who has achieved every single milestone his detractors claimed were impossible.
ObserverNeutral 5y ago
It's not surprising actually. People are looking for something to believe in, which will make them feel like the future will be brighter. Musk has this ability . Unless he goes crazy and becomes overleveraged with debt he'll be fine. He'll constantly move the goalposts and keep giving people hope, if Autopilot is proven not feasible, he'll just move onto the next big thing which will fill people with enthusiasm . He's essentially a politician, a techno-utopian cult leader who is also a CEO and major owner of the stock. His best intuition was understanding that telling people that the future will be brighter is itself a product which people are willing to buy. Much like people pay for insurance to have peace of mind, people gladly pay to be reassured that the world will be better. His second best intuition is to never bankrupt the company trying to deliver, just move the goalposts. As long as you don't bankrupt the company you can always move the goalposts
martin_bech 5y ago
I say this as a stock holder and Tesla car owner.. they should refund all FSD purchases, remove it from the store, and the app, make the EAP better, and keep building FSD, but STFU till its ready.
irthomasthomas 5y ago
Someone is criticising Musk? He's obviously a pedo guy and a polluting BMW driver. I shall send my people to reeducate him. No need for this to be front page. /s I joke, but seriously, how long can this Musk worship go on? Musk invested in Tesla AFTER Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning built the Roadster. He later sued them for founder status and ousted the real founders from their own company. It's now almost 20 years later, and Tesla is still a tiny little car company that has not had one profitable year (a fact which actually benefits Musk right now as the share price can not be anchored to anything real... the possibilities are infinite ;) The one company Musk actually founded; SolarCity, was an epic failure which needed to be saved from bankruptcy by Tesla and SpaceX. I honestly suspect that Tesla might have been a bigger success, had it remained with it's original founders. By the way, there are at least 11 lawsuits and investigations of SolarCity listed on it's wikipedia page. That's quite a rap sheet for such a young company with such noble goals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity#Lawsuits_and_investigations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity#Lawsuits_and_investi...
- zaptrem 5y ago
  Do you have a source on the Roadster issue? Per Wikipedia: > Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design at a detailed level, but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.[12] Eberhard acknowledged that Musk was the person who insisted from the beginning on a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer body and that Musk led design of components ranging from the power electronics module to the headlamps and other styling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc. Do you have a source on your company founding point? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com I don’t have time to keep going through this, but even the tone of your whole post is extremely smarmy/troll-like. Usually discourse here is a little more polite.
  - irthomasthomas 5y ago
    "However, it is wrongly assumed that Musk was behind the idea of Tesla Motors and electric vehicles. That credit belongs to Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning who originally started the company in 2003 and Musk's recent news prompted one user to tweet, "I still find it darkly amusing that the actual creator of a company named after Nikola Tesla is constantly erased from history, with all credit being given to some rich bully instead." https://meaww.com/elon-musk-tesla-cofounder-lawsuit-settlement-original-founded-martin-eberhard-origin-story-tesla https://meaww.com/elon-musk-tesla-cofounder-lawsuit-settleme...
sirsinsalot 5y ago
Who is asking for autonomous vehicles? Biased sample sure, but I've never heard anyone actually express a desire for it.
- onceiwasthere 5y ago
  Me. It would honestly be one of the biggest life improvements technology could possibly provide me given it was really and truly autonomous. The amount of extra time it would grant me as well as the amount of driving/traffic stress it would alleviate would be such a huge positive in my life.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Me. I've lost enough good friends because of bad drivers. It doesn't take much honest analysis to realize that humans can never be good drivers, so I want to take their car away from all. However in today's world there isn't a good option. Even if we would put in arbitrary subways, there are still jobs [like plumbers[ that cannot reasonably use transit. Thus self driving cars must be a part of my better future.
- hahaxdxd123 5y ago
  I hate driving and am a danger to myself and others but I still have to do it.
- waihtis 5y ago
  Use cases: 1) sleeping/reading/etc whilst driving long-distance 2) getting home from the city after drinks 3) pick up kids from school/practice (this would be a major time saver)
- klmadfejno 5y ago
  Me, just because I don't want to drive.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  If it was actually a real thing that might show up in a decade, sure, why not, sounds nice. It's not, though.

100 points by schintan 5y ago

Maybe the problem is that Musk keeps thinking the Autonomy scale is linear; it's not. Level 3 Autonomy is 10x as hard as Level 2; Level 4 is 10x as hard as level 3, etc. I don't know if 10 is the right multiplier here, but the point is the difficulty is exponential. Musk's engineers know this but for whatever reason he can't or won't understand it.

throwawayAI39 5y ago

If you are looking for some level-headedness on the topics of AI, self-driving etc, here are some recommendations: Book suitable even for lay people, written by someone who has been working for years in this field: [1] Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell People to follow: [2] https://twitter.com/missy_cummings/ https://twitter.com/missy_cummings/ [3] https://twitter.com/rodneyabrooks/ https://twitter.com/rodneyabrooks/ [4] https://www.twitter.com/MelMitchell1/ https://www.twitter.com/MelMitchell1/ Edit: For criticism of Elon Musk and/or Tesla: [5] https://www.elonmusk.today/ https://www.elonmusk.today/ [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lawsuits_involving_Tesla,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lawsuits_involving_Tes.... [8] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/surely-we-can-do-better-than-elon-musk https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/surely-we-can-do-bett... [9] https://troll.tv/videos/watch/54bc7bd0-8691-4359-aa7d-dc5148350ff3 https://troll.tv/videos/watch/54bc7bd0-8691-4359-aa7d-dc5148...

xyzzy21 5y ago

Yes. We already knew this. Elon is a marvelous marketer and salesman. He's frequently MISIDENTIFIED as the new Edison or Tesla. He's NOT that - both of those men were insanely technical and enough so the jump into technical problems and add value to work being done by their employees. Musk is not that. He's had very little to do with any technical aspects of any of his companies. But there's been plenty of PR spin to imply the opposite. That spin has always been a lie. I've had Silicon Valley bosses just like him. Our recent president is someone with the same personality just with fewer IQ points. But the same otherwise.

defterGoose 5y ago
I mean, he's got a physics degree and can speak knowlegeably about the domains he's in without reading off a script; that's more than you can say about the majority of CEOs in this day and age. He may have moved away from the nitty gritty day-to-day problem solving, but that's par for the course when you're heading successful companies. Disclaimer: I don't like the dude, he's an edgelord jerk.
DreamScatter 5y ago
Unfortunately, musk wants to present himself as if he is some kind of Tony Stark character like in the iron man movie. He also says the he doesn't care about college degrees, but I bet that all the people at SpaceX have the necessary degrees and are not drop outs, so that's probably also not really true about him either. The Tesla car company was also not founded by him but by someone else who actually engineered a car. I will give him some credit for SpaceX though, I think the company is doing well, but I doubt he is directly involved in engineering.

spamalot159 5y ago

I've been acquainted with a number of engineers at various autonomous vehicle companies and they are some of the most reserved people when it comes to the reality of autonomous driving. Many of them going so far as to say they would never use one for themselves now or in the near future. I think when domain experts speak up like this we should listen. The autonomous vehicle technology seems like it has a long way to go.

wutbrodo 5y ago
FWIW, I work in AV eng/research and have never heard someone say this. Most of the people I know in the space are pretty clear-headed about how dangerous human driving is. We are generally less optimistic about timing, but that was more true a couple years ago (before all the big cos' 2019 deadlines got pushed back) than it is now. Current timelines seem like an achievable challenge to me, and I don't think I'm unusually optimistic. Musk's timeline pronouncements, as usual, just aren't taken seriously (and imo hurt the industry's credibility). I like the guy and respect what he's done, but for whatever reason he says really out-there things that are best ignored until he shows the receipts.
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  Two things can be true at the same time: 1. Human-driven cars are dangerous. 2. Autonomous driving (currently) is dangerous. AD solves some human driving problems (like inattention) but introduces new ones (like driving under trucks).
  - wutbrodo 5y ago
    Obviously so, and this doesn't contradict anything I said. But the types of people who work on AVs are quantitative enough to understand that these magnitudes can differ, and are able to process that difference instead of waving them away as "both dangerous" and sticking with the status quo out of blind habit. Almost literally every decision trades off one danger for another: to pick an adjacent example, airbags introduce dangers that are different from the ones they solve. And yet, "airbags have dangers! Take them out of your car" is a woefully incomplete understanding of the risk landscape, driven more by our Neanderthal brain's superstition than our Homo Sapiens reasoning about risk. That sort of magical thinking is a hurdle that every shift in the risk landscape needs to overcome ("what if vaccines have microchips in them??"). This is, of course, dependent on actual comparative safety stats, but I've yet to hear a safety argument against taking a Waymo ride over an Uber in Chandler[1]. If the same level of transparency and rigor is used in more complex environments, I'd take a cruise/waymo car in sf too (once they launch). [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/10/30/waymo-data-shows-incredible-safety-record--they-should-deploy-today/?sh=111884c53829 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/10/30/waymo-...

superkuh 5y ago

Autonomous cars might be possible for climates without snow but they'll never be capable of driving with humans in winter till they start making the same intuitive mistakes as humans given sparse data (complete snow covering). The problem with any non-vision based location system to compensate for covered roads is that it isn't what humans use. In winter in cold climates sometimes the roads are covered with snow for days to weeks and road margins drift for the entire season. Humans just form new emergent lanes. These lanes often aren't the "correct" lanes that non-vision based absolute position would find. And they're very difficult to detect with computer, or even human, vision. Having one set of laws of autonomous cars in arizona and another for minnesota will lead to a lot of problems.

wutbrodo 5y ago
There are already limitations by road condition. This level of control over the operating environment is part of why so many services are targeting robotaxis as their initial product.
- shagie 5y ago
  Would a robotaxi in Detroit, Chicago, or Minneapolis in the winter be viable? I'm thinking about those roads where it's nominally a two lane in each direction, but the snow banks make it a 1.5 lane in each direction (if that). Where one doesn't start into the intersection when the light turns green - to give any cars that have the need to slide through. And likewise the ability for the robotaxi to realize "well, I've got no traction - guess I'm going to slide through this intersection and the left turn is impossible - I'm going straight through." A robotaxi in LA, SF... ok. Pheonix - sure. But I've yet to see any examples of a self driving vehicle able to drive in winter condition roads in the midwest.
  - wutbrodo 5y ago
    That's my point. Presumably Detroit doesn't have winter driving conditions in the summer, in which case robotaxis are feasible seasonally, or when there hasn't been rain/freezing conditions for X # of days, etc. Determining a bound on operating conditions is a far easier problem than making a car that drives itself. Before launching in any city, you have to validate that you can handle the idiosyncrasies of its driving environment. Perhaps the business side decides that Detroit isn't worth launching in, but <other snowy city> is drivable 200 days/yr and that's enough to warrant launching an intermittently-available service. My ultimate point is that AVs can cover a lot of ground from a business perspective without getting to full universal-availability. This is helped along by a combination of validating each city independently[1], limiting operating conditions, and safe-fallback teleoperation for occasional use. Validating a 2021 AV in a snowy environment isn't an inherently harder problem than validating a 2016 AV in a normal environment (with a safety driver), and a similar approach will be applicable. [1] Presumably less and less narrowly each time

rvz 5y ago

And we all knew that this 'Level 5' full self driving BS from Elon Musk, was actually and 'admittedly' Level 2. [0] I think that joke should have been reserved for Saturday night live. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932616 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932616

S_A_P 5y ago

This is my single biggest beef with Elon and Tesla. From the jump I think that the name overstates the ability of the vehicles. I think his tweets have been consistently optimistic regarding timelines to the point of hyperbole. I agree that autonomy is a worthwhile goal, but I think the real selling point of a Tesla is that they were until recently the best electric car you can buy. That still may be the case today but others are catching up. To me it would be a shame if autopilot NHTSA investigation brought Tesla down or a giant class action by everyone who plopped down 10 grand to get full autonomy and it never shows up.

dreamcompiler 5y ago
I think it's the best car you can buy, electric or otherwise. That's why it baffles me that Musk feels the need to consistently lie about autonomy, because the car is already great without it, and the "intelligent cruise control" which the car does have is convenient and as good as anybody else's. It's as if Apple made the best computers--which some people think they still do--but Tim Cook was tweeting every day about how the MacBook Pro can solve the halting problem. No it can't; of course it can't. Why would you continue to drag down your company's good name by lying like this?
- azinman2 5y ago
  Ego? Surrounded by yes-men (I’m guessing)?
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  I don't think Musk is intentionally lying about autonomy, this is just his worldview. He truly believes that strong AI is just around the corner and it poses an existential threat to the human race, and by the same token, of course we'll have full self-driving cars as soon as just a few small kinks are ironed out. These beliefs stem from a very strong worldview, and are not attempts at stock price manipulation or some kind of investor scam. Musk is convinced that there isn't a very big difference between the human brain and the tech inside GPUs combined with some matrix multiplication and training data, and these differences, to the degree they exist, are easily bridged with a bit of software. That's a core element of his beliefs. What is more interesting is why he hasn't learned that his worldview is so fundamentally wrong. And for that, I would say that it's hard for very rich and successful people to acknowledge they are so completely wrong about important things.

paulcole 5y ago

I still can’t get over how deceptive the marketing was on the Autopilot page on Tesla.com >Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars >All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver. How was it possible to know in advance what hardware will be required?

TylerLives 5y ago
What would they need the better hardware for?
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  If they haven't achieved full self driving, how could they know, and hence claim, to have the necessary hardware?
- lawn 5y ago
  Better sensors, which has already been one of the reasons for some of Tesla's self-driving crashes.
- paulcole 5y ago
  I don’t know, but Tesla took that text off their Autopilot page in late 2019, so maybe something changed…
kingsuper20 5y ago
>How was it possible to know in advance what hardware will be required? I suspect that most of the hardware is the ability of a computer to drive the car. Steering/throttle/braking inputs for example. It could be that what you mean by 'hardware' is some combination of intelligence and sensor system.
- paulcole 5y ago
  Regardless of what I might mean by “hardware”, is there any way Tesla should be stating as fact that the cars coming off the line in 2019 (when I took that quote from) need no additional hardware to accomplish something that is years (if not decades) away from becoming reality?

v8dev123 5y ago

Elon used to be good but now has become corrupt. My sources says he is addicted to Cocaine .. Such as this [1] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279270 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279270

injb 5y ago

This is basically hearsay. The claim in the title is based on this: "“Elon’s tweet does not match engineering reality per CJ,” Miguel Acosta, chief of the California DMV’s autonomous vehicles branch, wrote in the memo" So someone in the CA BMV claims a Tesla engineer (CJ) said this, but doesn't quote them, and the article doesn't elaborate on it. Maybe it's true but they're clearly reaching a bit with the title.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

I think the big issue is that if you really want autonomous driving over any road, you will likely either need sensors beyond vision or some AGI level model of the world. For example, on the highway, truck infront of you drops some debris. What do you do? It can be dangerous to suddenly swerve or brake, but also dangerous to hit something. What you do In real life is quickly evaluate. You are looking at the object that fell and estimating how deformable it is. For example, if it looks like a wad of paper, you would continue on. Or you estimate if you have clearance based o how big it looks and your mental model of your car’s clearance. You also look at the traffic beside you and behind you to evaluate risk of braking or swerving. You are also doing object recognition. If it is an empty box, you may be ok hitting it, but if it is an infant car seat that fell, you will brake hard/ swerve even if it is dangerous. Also, for people who bring up the safety of human drivers, one thing to consider is the safety of a hybrid approach where the human is still in charge but you have safety features like lane keeping, blind spot monitoring, automatic emergency braking, etc. That hybrid approach may be actually safer than either only human, or only computer driving.

danans 5y ago
> You are also doing object recognition. Object recognition has been a part of autonomous driving systems for a very long time. The difference between a stroller and a piece of paper is pretty well understood by these systems. > For example, on the highway, truck infront of you drops some debris. > What do you do? The answer is to always keep a large safety margin between you and the vehicle in front of you when traveling at high speeds, so you have time to react and take the safest course of action. Seconds make a huge difference in this scenario and it's easy to get them. No autonomous system is going to be hugging a truck bumper, but rather is going to always maintain a significantly greater safety distance than an aggressive human driver would. > If it is an empty box, you may be ok hitting it, You can never be sure that the box is empty, so I'd recommend always swerving to avoid.
kingsuper20 5y ago
> I think the big issue is that if you really want autonomous driving over any road, you will likely either need sensors beyond vision or some AGI level model of the world. Somehow people manage without this. Without any real knowledge of the problems the engineers are hitting, my current take is that to produce a reasonably good autonomous driving system requires killing some people. Slowly adding features will send more information to the mothership and they'll have to push the envelope to learn enough.

0xdeadbeefbabe 5y ago

A talking engineer?

edf13 5y ago

Engineer says Sales Person overstated features... Isn’t this the norm in any company? It’s always a struggle to keep a lid on sales promises!

hodder 5y ago

Fake it til you make it is fine with startups, however with publicly traded securities it is fraud. Elon Musk gets away with a lot of things that most capital markets participants would be imprisoned for. I'd certainly be in jail if I did half the BS he does on an almost daily basis. Yet, this fake it til you make model has enabled reflexivity in the growth and stock price allowing Tesla and other Musk ventures to grow and accomplish a lot with amazing speed. An interesting study in Soros' theories. Turns out that lying about timelines, product capability (even existence), liquidity, buyouts, crypto pump and dumps, and defamation is heavily rewarded by the market. Particularly if your fame, past accomplishments, and world savior persona makes you immune to prosecution.

ObserverNeutral 5y ago
> Yet, this fake it til you make model has enabled reflexivity in the growth and stock price allowing Tesla and other Musk ventures to grow and accomplish a lot with amazing speed. But once you are a company that size the goal is to grow and accomplish amazing stuff but with great margins. Tesla has essentially arrived at destination with regards to MarketCap, it won't become a 5 trillion dollar company. Nobody will. There is such a thing as the Sherman Act and Antitrust. Tesla still lags behind in every other metric (especially margins) compared to similar companies of that size. Seems to me Musk will have to work a whole lot just deliver and thus mantain the current valuation and his level of net worth right now. Alternatively he could get to 5 trillions by promising new products at an increasingly higher rate and thus avoiding the antitrust laws. Those laws were written for a company which actually has a market dominance, not a company which has a stock market dominance based on the promises of the CEO and people believing in it and buying the stock. I think from what we've seen, he's going in this direction exactly, he'll keep inflating the bubble that's for sure. He only has one gear
fitzie 5y ago
this is how a narrative replaces unbiased journalism. the underlying email chain shows this conversation is regarding the full self driving "beta" that Tesla is slowly releasing. while it is clear that the regulators are concerned about customer confusion, they are more concerned that Tesla is releasing capabilities beyond what was explained to regulators (I.e. level 2). the reporter is able to twist this into a whistleblower like headline and use language that completely distorts the nature of the underlying conversation. readers can then opine on how they like or dislike Tesla/elon and ignore relevant facts. Tesla has shown that it is taking increasing steps to ensure people are using fsd responsibly. while autopilot used used simplistic sensors to gauge operator attentiveness, fsd uses cameras to watch to driver. as elon has said, with autopilot, the company has data that proves that it reduces the risk of accident. he has said there is a moral argument that it is immoral to wait until it is "complete" before making it widely available. this evidence is regularly ignored by people talking about the dangers of Tesla/elon automation claims.

userulluipeste 5y ago

When ADAS systems come into play, the primary concern is who's going to shoulder the blame when things fail. This autonomous driving thing is no simple nor incremental improvement, this is an overhaul in our current structure of liability. So far, with a human driving, when things go awry, blame can be easily assigned, it's simple and case can be closed. When we introduce total absolution of the former party in charge, simeone else has to step in. The only one with any control here is the producer of the vehicle, yet the scope of responsibility is far too large for anyone at the traditional levels of rigor. The consequence is that ever increasing levels of safety requirements get demanded from the self-driving technology, enough to make it at any time both insuficiently mature and an even more desired thing for how much it has to offer in order to cover the said requirements. Mr. Musk seem like a smart man to not be aware of this, which makes me think about the moral hazard of his tweets.

Geee 5y ago
Liability is the difference between L2 and L5 systems. Most people don't understand that Tesla FSD will operate in L2 mode until it's 99.999999% reliable. Until then, you'll have to keep your hands on the wheel and accept that you are liable, even if the car drives autonomously.
lsaferite 5y ago
I'm assuming you are talking about when we reach level 4+ right? Anything below that is clearly still in the realm of driver responsibility. Level 4 is really where the large grey area will live, because level 5 will certainly require moving that liability to the system manufacturer. Just a minor nit, "ADAS systems" is redundant.

adamqureshi 5y ago

This is exactly why Tesla should rename full self driving to FUTURE SELF DRIVING. Because thats exactly what it feels like. there should be no mis-understanding. :-)

johnthuss 5y ago

I'm hopeful that we'll get self driving capability in the next few decades, but pre-selling this feature to customers before it was even CLOSE to ready was criminal.

akshayB 5y ago

This is how marketing works, all companies do this Apple -- best iPhone ever so what happens to phone I purchased last year (reality - there a decent upgrades) IBM Watson -- commercials looks like you can layoff 20% of employees as this things can work like wonders (reality - its not that smart) Tesla -- Autopilot is not 100% auto pilot human supervision is needed at times. We are far away from 100% autonomous vehicles. I wish they selected a better name for this feature.

jeffreyrogers 5y ago
There is obviously a qualitative difference in the claims Tesla (and other Musk companies) have made and standard marketing claims of most companies.

xwdv 5y ago

Why can’t robo taxis just be human taxi drivers at a desk remotely driving a vehicle around?

bluGill 5y ago
Latency matters, as does reliability. If the network can go down for any reason you cannot do this.

k33n 5y ago

I love reading the opinions that people who have done nothing and will do nothing for the world have on Elon. Imagine if you spent your energy doing something good or interesting instead of writing lengthy essays criticizing a guy who has achieved every single milestone his detractors claimed were impossible.

ObserverNeutral 5y ago

It's not surprising actually. People are looking for something to believe in, which will make them feel like the future will be brighter. Musk has this ability . Unless he goes crazy and becomes overleveraged with debt he'll be fine. He'll constantly move the goalposts and keep giving people hope, if Autopilot is proven not feasible, he'll just move onto the next big thing which will fill people with enthusiasm . He's essentially a politician, a techno-utopian cult leader who is also a CEO and major owner of the stock. His best intuition was understanding that telling people that the future will be brighter is itself a product which people are willing to buy. Much like people pay for insurance to have peace of mind, people gladly pay to be reassured that the world will be better. His second best intuition is to never bankrupt the company trying to deliver, just move the goalposts. As long as you don't bankrupt the company you can always move the goalposts

martin_bech 5y ago

I say this as a stock holder and Tesla car owner.. they should refund all FSD purchases, remove it from the store, and the app, make the EAP better, and keep building FSD, but STFU till its ready.

irthomasthomas 5y ago

Someone is criticising Musk? He's obviously a pedo guy and a polluting BMW driver. I shall send my people to reeducate him. No need for this to be front page. /s I joke, but seriously, how long can this Musk worship go on? Musk invested in Tesla AFTER Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning built the Roadster. He later sued them for founder status and ousted the real founders from their own company. It's now almost 20 years later, and Tesla is still a tiny little car company that has not had one profitable year (a fact which actually benefits Musk right now as the share price can not be anchored to anything real... the possibilities are infinite ;) The one company Musk actually founded; SolarCity, was an epic failure which needed to be saved from bankruptcy by Tesla and SpaceX. I honestly suspect that Tesla might have been a bigger success, had it remained with it's original founders. By the way, there are at least 11 lawsuits and investigations of SolarCity listed on it's wikipedia page. That's quite a rap sheet for such a young company with such noble goals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity#Lawsuits_and_investigations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity#Lawsuits_and_investi...

zaptrem 5y ago
Do you have a source on the Roadster issue? Per Wikipedia: > Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design at a detailed level, but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.[12] Eberhard acknowledged that Musk was the person who insisted from the beginning on a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer body and that Musk led design of components ranging from the power electronics module to the headlamps and other styling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc. Do you have a source on your company founding point? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com I don’t have time to keep going through this, but even the tone of your whole post is extremely smarmy/troll-like. Usually discourse here is a little more polite.
- irthomasthomas 5y ago
  "However, it is wrongly assumed that Musk was behind the idea of Tesla Motors and electric vehicles. That credit belongs to Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning who originally started the company in 2003 and Musk's recent news prompted one user to tweet, "I still find it darkly amusing that the actual creator of a company named after Nikola Tesla is constantly erased from history, with all credit being given to some rich bully instead." https://meaww.com/elon-musk-tesla-cofounder-lawsuit-settlement-original-founded-martin-eberhard-origin-story-tesla https://meaww.com/elon-musk-tesla-cofounder-lawsuit-settleme...

sirsinsalot 5y ago

Who is asking for autonomous vehicles? Biased sample sure, but I've never heard anyone actually express a desire for it.

onceiwasthere 5y ago
Me. It would honestly be one of the biggest life improvements technology could possibly provide me given it was really and truly autonomous. The amount of extra time it would grant me as well as the amount of driving/traffic stress it would alleviate would be such a huge positive in my life.
bluGill 5y ago
Me. I've lost enough good friends because of bad drivers. It doesn't take much honest analysis to realize that humans can never be good drivers, so I want to take their car away from all. However in today's world there isn't a good option. Even if we would put in arbitrary subways, there are still jobs [like plumbers[ that cannot reasonably use transit. Thus self driving cars must be a part of my better future.
hahaxdxd123 5y ago
I hate driving and am a danger to myself and others but I still have to do it.
waihtis 5y ago
Use cases: 1) sleeping/reading/etc whilst driving long-distance 2) getting home from the city after drinks 3) pick up kids from school/practice (this would be a major time saver)
klmadfejno 5y ago
Me, just because I don't want to drive.
rsynnott 5y ago
If it was actually a real thing that might show up in a decade, sure, why not, sounds nice. It's not, though.