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Level 4? Mercedes already beat them to level 3 https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23572942/mercedes-drive-pilot-level-3-approved-nevada https://www.theverge.c

Level 4? Mercedes already beat them to level 3 https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23572942/mercedes-drive-pilot-level-3-approved-nevada https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23572942/mercedes-drive-p...

leetharris 3y ago
Just like how Samsung beat Apple to face scanning technology. Mercedes version is extremely limited and is only available on $100k+ cars with tons of additional hardware. I have Tesla FSD. It is certainly overpriced, but it has genuinely been getting a lot better in the last year. When I first got it I was disappointed because it was so useless, now I use it probably 70%+ of my drives. IMO Tesla is the closest to a mass-market version of the technology.
- tnel77 3y ago
  There’s a huge subset of people who just desperately want to “prove” that the popular company is bad. Apple bad, Tesla bad, etc.
  - fomine3 3y ago
    Because fanboys are too verbose for hype
    - simondotau 3y ago
      Fanboys sometimes talk about a favoured corporation with rose coloured glasses. Hateboys (or whatever you might call an inverse fanboy) often talk in reductive and/or derogatory terms about both corporations and anyone who defends them. Both groups are occasionally a bit sad and naive, but it's usually only the latter which become corrosive and openly hateful. Unfortunately the bulk of the internet seems incapable of recognising this and all too often gives hateboys a free pass.
    - tnel77 3y ago
      Fanboys also annoy me. The other side of the coin is that there are people who worship companies no matter what they do. I personally prefer more of a “let’s judge each product on its own” sort of person. I love my iPhone and AirPods, but I don’t personally have any desire to own a Mac or the new Vision Pro.
jandrese 3y ago
The Mercedes system is a headline system. In that it was designed to generate headlines without actually accomplishing much.
- kube-system 3y ago
  MB's system accomplishes the levels of quality defined in the SAE standard. Tesla is taking a different strategy by focusing on quantity of features, although many of them fail to meet the reliability standards of the higher SAE specs. Tesla is stuck at level 2 because the level of reliability required at level 3 would mean they'd have to remove features to meet it.
  - ballenf 3y ago
    And turn it off completely when driving on half the roads in the US.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  To be fair, Tesla calls theirs "FSD" for essentially the same reason.
- rasz 3y ago
  Tesla generates plenty of headlines every time one decapitates a driver or crashes full speed into large pretty much visible from space police/fire truck blinking all of its lights.
93po 3y ago
This is a tired argument. Level 3 driving in extremely strict conditions in a very small area using technology and software that doesn't scale isn't "beating" Tesla.
- kube-system 3y ago
  Level 3 is the lowest level of self-driving. Level 2 and below are driver assistance features. Tesla makes very nice driver assistance features, but they have not released any features which operate the vehicle safely by itself under any circumstance. MB is beating Tesla in the self driving game because they've released a car that is >0% self driving. Tesla is beating everyone at the driver assistance game.
  - 93po 3y ago
    This is semantics. Firstly because this difference is largely because Tesla chooses to not deploy it as level 3 in some tiny highly-mapped market with sensors (LIDAR) and software that don't scale (MB's level 3 breaks at the first change in roads like construction). Secondly because Tesla is 90%+ of the way to building level 3 driving in 99% of places. MB is 99% of the way to level 3 driving in 0.1% of places and it would take them years and billions of dollars to get that to 5%. I'll let you do the math and see which is further ahead.
    - kube-system 3y ago
      It's not semantics at all. They're both currently focused on solving very different problems under the broad category of "driving automation". While MBs approach has obvious coverage limitations, the advantage to that approach is that the solution is a more clearly scoped problem with a more obvious answer: expand the coverage. Tesla's approach doesn't have nearly as clear of a path to advancement. They need technology that doesn't yet exist to get there. Some have posed some serious concerns about whether Tesla's feature-first maturity-second approach is an engineering dead end and will ever be able to mature to the point of being able to operate unsupervised. They may be close, but the Pareto principle is a bitch. Time will tell, but I suspect we'll see Tesla adopt some of the same strategies that other automakers are taking before this race is over.
fastball 3y ago
The self-driving car level system is stupid because it is implies linearity but it is absolutely not. It also implies that higher level == better, which is certainly not a given. Is a system that can drive well on 10% of roads 99% of the time better than a system that can drive on 90% of roads 80% of the time? Not objectively. The former is "level 3" and the latter is "level 2". A solution that can get you to 3 quickly might never get you to 4. And just because you beat someone else to market with "level 3" doesn't mean their solution won't skip over yours straight to 4/5.

Level 4? Mercedes already beat them to level 3 https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23572942/mercedes-drive-pilot-level-3-approved-nevada https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23572942/mercedes-drive-p...

leetharris 3y ago

Just like how Samsung beat Apple to face scanning technology. Mercedes version is extremely limited and is only available on $100k+ cars with tons of additional hardware. I have Tesla FSD. It is certainly overpriced, but it has genuinely been getting a lot better in the last year. When I first got it I was disappointed because it was so useless, now I use it probably 70%+ of my drives. IMO Tesla is the closest to a mass-market version of the technology.

tnel77 3y ago
There’s a huge subset of people who just desperately want to “prove” that the popular company is bad. Apple bad, Tesla bad, etc.
- fomine3 3y ago
  Because fanboys are too verbose for hype
  - simondotau 3y ago
    Fanboys sometimes talk about a favoured corporation with rose coloured glasses. Hateboys (or whatever you might call an inverse fanboy) often talk in reductive and/or derogatory terms about both corporations and anyone who defends them. Both groups are occasionally a bit sad and naive, but it's usually only the latter which become corrosive and openly hateful. Unfortunately the bulk of the internet seems incapable of recognising this and all too often gives hateboys a free pass.
  - tnel77 3y ago
    Fanboys also annoy me. The other side of the coin is that there are people who worship companies no matter what they do. I personally prefer more of a “let’s judge each product on its own” sort of person. I love my iPhone and AirPods, but I don’t personally have any desire to own a Mac or the new Vision Pro.

jandrese 3y ago

The Mercedes system is a headline system. In that it was designed to generate headlines without actually accomplishing much.

kube-system 3y ago
MB's system accomplishes the levels of quality defined in the SAE standard. Tesla is taking a different strategy by focusing on quantity of features, although many of them fail to meet the reliability standards of the higher SAE specs. Tesla is stuck at level 2 because the level of reliability required at level 3 would mean they'd have to remove features to meet it.
- ballenf 3y ago
  And turn it off completely when driving on half the roads in the US.
_ea1k 3y ago
To be fair, Tesla calls theirs "FSD" for essentially the same reason.
rasz 3y ago
Tesla generates plenty of headlines every time one decapitates a driver or crashes full speed into large pretty much visible from space police/fire truck blinking all of its lights.

93po 3y ago

This is a tired argument. Level 3 driving in extremely strict conditions in a very small area using technology and software that doesn't scale isn't "beating" Tesla.

kube-system 3y ago
Level 3 is the lowest level of self-driving. Level 2 and below are driver assistance features. Tesla makes very nice driver assistance features, but they have not released any features which operate the vehicle safely by itself under any circumstance. MB is beating Tesla in the self driving game because they've released a car that is >0% self driving. Tesla is beating everyone at the driver assistance game.
- 93po 3y ago
  This is semantics. Firstly because this difference is largely because Tesla chooses to not deploy it as level 3 in some tiny highly-mapped market with sensors (LIDAR) and software that don't scale (MB's level 3 breaks at the first change in roads like construction). Secondly because Tesla is 90%+ of the way to building level 3 driving in 99% of places. MB is 99% of the way to level 3 driving in 0.1% of places and it would take them years and billions of dollars to get that to 5%. I'll let you do the math and see which is further ahead.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    It's not semantics at all. They're both currently focused on solving very different problems under the broad category of "driving automation". While MBs approach has obvious coverage limitations, the advantage to that approach is that the solution is a more clearly scoped problem with a more obvious answer: expand the coverage. Tesla's approach doesn't have nearly as clear of a path to advancement. They need technology that doesn't yet exist to get there. Some have posed some serious concerns about whether Tesla's feature-first maturity-second approach is an engineering dead end and will ever be able to mature to the point of being able to operate unsupervised. They may be close, but the Pareto principle is a bitch. Time will tell, but I suspect we'll see Tesla adopt some of the same strategies that other automakers are taking before this race is over.

fastball 3y ago

The self-driving car level system is stupid because it is implies linearity but it is absolutely not. It also implies that higher level == better, which is certainly not a given. Is a system that can drive well on 10% of roads 99% of the time better than a system that can drive on 90% of roads 80% of the time? Not objectively. The former is "level 3" and the latter is "level 2". A solution that can get you to 3 quickly might never get you to 4. And just because you beat someone else to market with "level 3" doesn't mean their solution won't skip over yours straight to 4/5.