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Having owned a Tesla for 4 years, and watching other "self driving" American competitors perform like this, I wonder if the Germans will slowly but surely get t

Having owned a Tesla for 4 years, and watching other "self driving" American competitors perform like this, I wonder if the Germans will slowly but surely get there first. Tesla & others are trying a SV "disrupt" type approach that also requires the car to basically work for every use case. City driving is horribly difficult. I would argue that handling city driving without intervention is not far off AGI. The amount of situations you can encounter in city driving are essentially infinite. And you need a self driving car to be able to handle things the first time they see it, not just once that particular type of scenario has been tagged in training set. Germans (BMW, MB specifically) are following a more methodical, legalistic approach to driver assistance towards autonomous driving. Adaptive cruise & lane keeping, emergency braking. Then automated lane changing. Then hands-free below 35mph. Then handles on/off ramps. Etc etc, step by step. But at each step, the system actually works will for the well-define feature set they have sold you, and doesn't regress month to month with bad releases. For many people if your car could handle the highways entirely and you just hand to get yourself to/from the highway, they'd be really happy. And this is a far more achievable goal than essentially solving AGI.

KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
I am pretty confused about this German thing, only startups that don't have a current business like Cruise and Waymo are going for the disrupt approach. Literally every automaker that currently sell cars are doing incremental level 2/3 features, including Tesla.
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  Every company has invested in l4 including ze germans. They just usually run it as spin off
  - steveBK123 4y ago
    The Germans are not charging users $15k to add these test features to their production vehicles.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      Instead they're charging users a monthly fee to use their heated seats.
      - steveBK123 4y ago
        It's kind of weird, how each brand is trying to monetize / software-ize / subscription-ize different pieces. Tesla has very much unfortunately been a leader here that others are following. For example, Tesla for a while was shipping cars their cheapest with the heated seat hardware installed but software locked, and then offering buyers to pay later to unlock. Similar for some battery capacities. Likewise, Tesla charges for the monthly cellular data you almost certainly want/need after the first year, while BMW includes it free for the lifetime of the car or warranty (I don't recall offhand). BMW does offer you to upgrade the cellular service to let the car be a wifi hotspot, whereas Tesla doesn't offer that at all. You can use CarPlay on your BMW and therefore be relying on your phone data as well, while Tesla does not.. so if you want functional streaming music & GPS with traffic data on that big screen you are going to pay up after year 1. On the self driving software, Tesla has tried different ways of pricing & slicing (AP/EAP/FSD) over the years. Aside from the now free base AP offering, EAP/FSD has always been quite pricey compared to optioning out some of the assistance packages on BMW and other competitors. Similarly because Tesla has included the same hardware, they'll gladly sell you the software later (at progressively increasing pricing). Porsche also offers "function on demand" to add software packages later to unlock various automations you didn't buy initially..
    - dilyevsky 4y ago
      I’m not talking about tesla scammers I’m talking about direct competition to waymo, cruise and others
- steveBK123 4y ago
  What features Tesla does/doesn't support in what modes and whether they are prod or beta is a complete disaster. Read the car's user manual, Autopilot marketing page and car sales page to come back with 3 different answers. Not to mention tweets & press releases. Autopilot is safe & will prevent accidents and avoid accidents.. but also Autosteer (which is the steering part of autopilot) is beta and shouldn't be used near pedestrians. FSD is a 5-figure software beta, test gated and essentially should work anywhere with supervision, but also no one knows what scenarios it doesn't support other than "discovering" them in the wild & excusing Tesla for yet another "first", such as oncoming trolley cars vs your unprotected left turn. It avoids pedestrians and obstacles, unless they are short. etc etc. The Germans are not charging users for ill defined, beta, work-in-progress software.
  - KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
    It's a valid complaint but it's goalpost moving. Also aside from Tesla every automaker has pretty clear level 2/3 features including GM, Ford, Toyota, Kia, etc everyone.
Eleison23 4y ago
Once upon a time I was a young punk with a fairly nice car. I had about 6 years of driving under my belt, and less than half of it was with a manual transmission. I was up in Palo Alto during a light rainstorm, and we were on our lunch break. I was driving two coworkers in my 1988 Acura, one of whom was an absolute freak who drove his sports car super-aggressively. I was at an intersection in the left turn lane, waiting for an opening. Traffic was fairly heavy and the roads were slick. I saw a possible opening and took it, but there was a car in oncoming traffic faster than I had anticipated. Having begun my maneuver, I counterintuitively held my foot to the accelerator, rather than stomping the brake, and my Integra obediently sped through the turn without incident. Both of my coworkers commended my presence of mind and I was relieved that my driving skills were validated. Our company was involved in selling software components, and I have no idea what a "self-driving" car would've done in that situation, but as I had discovered, staying the course and stomping the gas pedal was counterintuitive in that place and time, but ultimately correct and safe.
- jackcarter 4y ago
  Hopefully, a self-driving car would have waited for a safe opening to make the turn.
  - steveBK123 4y ago
    Bad weather & bad visibility, most of the self driving solutions to date just hand back control to a human driver. In other words, hand back control at the last possible second in the most difficult driving to a human who has been in an otherwise relaxed and lest alert state. Winning! It's like if spell check only worked on words shorter than 6 letters.
    - ahahahahah 4y ago
      This is wrong, only the shittiest self driving in name only systems have that behavior. Any real attempts at it (i.e. not Tesla or comma) do not expect or require a human takeover immediately. For example, Cruise and waymo don't even have humans to take over, MB has a 10 second warning (and actually the human doesn't even need to takeover at that point, the system will slowly bring the car to a stop).

KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago

I am pretty confused about this German thing, only startups that don't have a current business like Cruise and Waymo are going for the disrupt approach. Literally every automaker that currently sell cars are doing incremental level 2/3 features, including Tesla.

dilyevsky 4y ago
Every company has invested in l4 including ze germans. They just usually run it as spin off
- steveBK123 4y ago
  The Germans are not charging users $15k to add these test features to their production vehicles.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Instead they're charging users a monthly fee to use their heated seats.
    - steveBK123 4y ago
      It's kind of weird, how each brand is trying to monetize / software-ize / subscription-ize different pieces. Tesla has very much unfortunately been a leader here that others are following. For example, Tesla for a while was shipping cars their cheapest with the heated seat hardware installed but software locked, and then offering buyers to pay later to unlock. Similar for some battery capacities. Likewise, Tesla charges for the monthly cellular data you almost certainly want/need after the first year, while BMW includes it free for the lifetime of the car or warranty (I don't recall offhand). BMW does offer you to upgrade the cellular service to let the car be a wifi hotspot, whereas Tesla doesn't offer that at all. You can use CarPlay on your BMW and therefore be relying on your phone data as well, while Tesla does not.. so if you want functional streaming music & GPS with traffic data on that big screen you are going to pay up after year 1. On the self driving software, Tesla has tried different ways of pricing & slicing (AP/EAP/FSD) over the years. Aside from the now free base AP offering, EAP/FSD has always been quite pricey compared to optioning out some of the assistance packages on BMW and other competitors. Similarly because Tesla has included the same hardware, they'll gladly sell you the software later (at progressively increasing pricing). Porsche also offers "function on demand" to add software packages later to unlock various automations you didn't buy initially..
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    I’m not talking about tesla scammers I’m talking about direct competition to waymo, cruise and others
steveBK123 4y ago
What features Tesla does/doesn't support in what modes and whether they are prod or beta is a complete disaster. Read the car's user manual, Autopilot marketing page and car sales page to come back with 3 different answers. Not to mention tweets & press releases. Autopilot is safe & will prevent accidents and avoid accidents.. but also Autosteer (which is the steering part of autopilot) is beta and shouldn't be used near pedestrians. FSD is a 5-figure software beta, test gated and essentially should work anywhere with supervision, but also no one knows what scenarios it doesn't support other than "discovering" them in the wild & excusing Tesla for yet another "first", such as oncoming trolley cars vs your unprotected left turn. It avoids pedestrians and obstacles, unless they are short. etc etc. The Germans are not charging users for ill defined, beta, work-in-progress software.
- KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
  It's a valid complaint but it's goalpost moving. Also aside from Tesla every automaker has pretty clear level 2/3 features including GM, Ford, Toyota, Kia, etc everyone.

Eleison23 4y ago

Once upon a time I was a young punk with a fairly nice car. I had about 6 years of driving under my belt, and less than half of it was with a manual transmission. I was up in Palo Alto during a light rainstorm, and we were on our lunch break. I was driving two coworkers in my 1988 Acura, one of whom was an absolute freak who drove his sports car super-aggressively. I was at an intersection in the left turn lane, waiting for an opening. Traffic was fairly heavy and the roads were slick. I saw a possible opening and took it, but there was a car in oncoming traffic faster than I had anticipated. Having begun my maneuver, I counterintuitively held my foot to the accelerator, rather than stomping the brake, and my Integra obediently sped through the turn without incident. Both of my coworkers commended my presence of mind and I was relieved that my driving skills were validated. Our company was involved in selling software components, and I have no idea what a "self-driving" car would've done in that situation, but as I had discovered, staying the course and stomping the gas pedal was counterintuitive in that place and time, but ultimately correct and safe.

jackcarter 4y ago
Hopefully, a self-driving car would have waited for a safe opening to make the turn.
- steveBK123 4y ago
  Bad weather & bad visibility, most of the self driving solutions to date just hand back control to a human driver. In other words, hand back control at the last possible second in the most difficult driving to a human who has been in an otherwise relaxed and lest alert state. Winning! It's like if spell check only worked on words shorter than 6 letters.
  - ahahahahah 4y ago
    This is wrong, only the shittiest self driving in name only systems have that behavior. Any real attempts at it (i.e. not Tesla or comma) do not expect or require a human takeover immediately. For example, Cruise and waymo don't even have humans to take over, MB has a 10 second warning (and actually the human doesn't even need to takeover at that point, the system will slowly bring the car to a stop).