4 ms·

The False Promises of Tesla’s Full Self Driving

35 points by ra7 3y ago

upbeat_general 3y ago
It’s really unfortunate how much impact these promises have had. A lot of people believe them, even plenty of technical people I know. Lots of people [wrongly] really believe that Tesla’s are self-driving and are the leading company in the field.
- mbushey 3y ago
  And just who do you believe is the leader? You've never [recently] been in a Tesla with FSD, have you? Tesla FSD is amazing.
  - Veserv 3y ago
    Waymo and Cruise make a car autonomous allowing it to drive with no driver in the seat for tens of thousands of miles on average between incidents. Tesla FSD requires a driver in the seat to be operated safely, and explicitly does not make the car autonomous as stated on their website [1]. Tesla FSD is explicitly not labeled as a Autonomous Driving System (ADS) by Tesla to avoid mandatory NHTSA [2] and CA DMV [3][4] incident reporting requirements and Tesla does not and has not ever had a driverless testing permit. For that matter, although Tesla does have a permit for ADS testing with a safety driver, they have not done any in years. In addition, Tesla FSD is lucky to go a few tens to low hundreds of miles between safety-critical interventions (hard to get reliable numbers since Tesla does not report official numbers). Waymo and Cruise with a safety driver average tens of thousands [5]; literally 100x-1000x better. This analysis also ignores qualitative differences in ability, like how Tesla FSD still can not recognize basic signs such as “Do Not Enter” and “One Way”. It is lacking even basic functionality. [1] https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot [2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-order-crash-reporting https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-orde... [3] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/autonomous-vehicles/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto... [4] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/autonomous-vehicles/autonomous-vehicle-collision-reports/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto... [5] https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2023/02/17/2022-disengagement-report-from-california/ https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2023/02/17/2022-disen...
    - DennisP 3y ago
      Cruise/Waymo precisely map out their driving areas and if anything changes too much, the cars shut down. A TV news crew took a ride in one, and the car parked diagonally in the road, where they had to wait 20 minutes for the company to send out a human driver. Tesla is attempting something different: driving anywhere, just like a human can drive anywhere. It's a more difficult problem so it takes longer.
      - kaffeeringe 3y ago
        ...or forever?
        mbushey 3y ago
        It's already good enough to make me happy.
      - Veserv 3y ago
        Tesla FSD is not autonomous anywhere. It operates 100x-1000x worse than Waymo and Cruise which are themselves still inadequate by a factor of 10x-100x for safe general commercial deployment. Saying that Tesla is trying to solve a harder problem when they are a factor of 10,000x from solving the “easier” ones is the height of wishful thinking. Besides, Waymo and Cruise are solving the general problem. The baseless assertion that driving the breadth of a city like San Francisco or Phoenix is somehow not representative of general driving is ludicrous on its face. Humans who learn in one city generally have the ability to drive in most other cities. The skills are largely transferable. Waymo and Cruise take a slow and measured approach, validating in a well defined and constrained domain not because they could not operate everywhere 1,000x better than Tesla FSD, but because allowing a system only 1,000x better than Tesla FSD on the road without careful supervision is fucking criminal.
  - upbeat_general 3y ago
    I haven't, although I've watched a good number of videos from recent betas. In terms of traditional automakers and systems that anyone can buy, Tesla is the leader (although I believe hyundai has a very good highway system, not city though). But in terms of self-driving, it's hard to rank precisely but they're certainly nowhere near, say, Waymo. Plenty of people enjoy FSD and understand that they still have to correct it every so often but to a lot of people "self-driving" means just that.
diebeforei485 3y ago
Twitter is full of videos of FSD drives and they seem to work very well now. You can see the software improvements from older drive videos on the same channel (running the same hardware). I think it's important to look at the current state of FSD beta, not the past state from more than a year ago.
- GhostVII 3y ago
  But they still aren't anywhere close to level three self driving (let alone level 5, which Elon promised). What's the point of self driving if you have to constantly monitor it?
  - mbushey 3y ago
    Constantly monitoring FSD is no where near as much work as driving. It's also 5x safer than just a human.
    - Veserv 3y ago
      There is no auditable evidence that it is 5x safer than a human. The 5x safer number is a number self-reported by the Tesla marketing department [1]. This “safety report” consists of three unverified “miles per crash” ratios with no underlying raw data. They do not even publish the raw number of “miles” or “crashes” used in their analysis. It is a “safety report” where they can not even be bothered to publish the numerator or denominator, let alone publishing their methodology, analysis, controlling for variables, or accounting for bias. No self-respecting scientist or engineer would be caught dead issuing such a deficient report. In contrast, here is the report by Waymo on their first million driverless miles [2]. As you can see, it follows the basic structure of a research paper. It offers a detailed description and analysis of every individual crash. The difference in reporting is the gap between a grade school report and a proper research paper. It is an abomination that Tesla is allowed to publish such unsupported and misleading “statistics” just they can more effectively market a incomplete and unsafe product to unsuspecting consumers. [1] https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport [2] https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents/safety/Safety%20Performance%20of%20Waymo%20RO%20at%201M%20miles.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents...

35 points by ra7 3y ago

It’s really unfortunate how much impact these promises have had. A lot of people believe them, even plenty of technical people I know. Lots of people [wrongly] really believe that Tesla’s are self-driving and are the leading company in the field.

mbushey 3y ago
And just who do you believe is the leader? You've never [recently] been in a Tesla with FSD, have you? Tesla FSD is amazing.
- Veserv 3y ago
  Waymo and Cruise make a car autonomous allowing it to drive with no driver in the seat for tens of thousands of miles on average between incidents. Tesla FSD requires a driver in the seat to be operated safely, and explicitly does not make the car autonomous as stated on their website [1]. Tesla FSD is explicitly not labeled as a Autonomous Driving System (ADS) by Tesla to avoid mandatory NHTSA [2] and CA DMV [3][4] incident reporting requirements and Tesla does not and has not ever had a driverless testing permit. For that matter, although Tesla does have a permit for ADS testing with a safety driver, they have not done any in years. In addition, Tesla FSD is lucky to go a few tens to low hundreds of miles between safety-critical interventions (hard to get reliable numbers since Tesla does not report official numbers). Waymo and Cruise with a safety driver average tens of thousands [5]; literally 100x-1000x better. This analysis also ignores qualitative differences in ability, like how Tesla FSD still can not recognize basic signs such as “Do Not Enter” and “One Way”. It is lacking even basic functionality. [1] https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot [2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-order-crash-reporting https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-orde... [3] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/autonomous-vehicles/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto... [4] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/autonomous-vehicles/autonomous-vehicle-collision-reports/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto... [5] https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2023/02/17/2022-disengagement-report-from-california/ https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2023/02/17/2022-disen...
  - DennisP 3y ago
    Cruise/Waymo precisely map out their driving areas and if anything changes too much, the cars shut down. A TV news crew took a ride in one, and the car parked diagonally in the road, where they had to wait 20 minutes for the company to send out a human driver. Tesla is attempting something different: driving anywhere, just like a human can drive anywhere. It's a more difficult problem so it takes longer.
    - kaffeeringe 3y ago
      ...or forever?
      - mbushey 3y ago
        It's already good enough to make me happy.
    - Veserv 3y ago
      Tesla FSD is not autonomous anywhere. It operates 100x-1000x worse than Waymo and Cruise which are themselves still inadequate by a factor of 10x-100x for safe general commercial deployment. Saying that Tesla is trying to solve a harder problem when they are a factor of 10,000x from solving the “easier” ones is the height of wishful thinking. Besides, Waymo and Cruise are solving the general problem. The baseless assertion that driving the breadth of a city like San Francisco or Phoenix is somehow not representative of general driving is ludicrous on its face. Humans who learn in one city generally have the ability to drive in most other cities. The skills are largely transferable. Waymo and Cruise take a slow and measured approach, validating in a well defined and constrained domain not because they could not operate everywhere 1,000x better than Tesla FSD, but because allowing a system only 1,000x better than Tesla FSD on the road without careful supervision is fucking criminal.
- upbeat_general 3y ago
  I haven't, although I've watched a good number of videos from recent betas. In terms of traditional automakers and systems that anyone can buy, Tesla is the leader (although I believe hyundai has a very good highway system, not city though). But in terms of self-driving, it's hard to rank precisely but they're certainly nowhere near, say, Waymo. Plenty of people enjoy FSD and understand that they still have to correct it every so often but to a lot of people "self-driving" means just that.

diebeforei485 3y ago

Twitter is full of videos of FSD drives and they seem to work very well now. You can see the software improvements from older drive videos on the same channel (running the same hardware). I think it's important to look at the current state of FSD beta, not the past state from more than a year ago.

GhostVII 3y ago
But they still aren't anywhere close to level three self driving (let alone level 5, which Elon promised). What's the point of self driving if you have to constantly monitor it?
- mbushey 3y ago
  Constantly monitoring FSD is no where near as much work as driving. It's also 5x safer than just a human.
  - Veserv 3y ago
    There is no auditable evidence that it is 5x safer than a human. The 5x safer number is a number self-reported by the Tesla marketing department [1]. This “safety report” consists of three unverified “miles per crash” ratios with no underlying raw data. They do not even publish the raw number of “miles” or “crashes” used in their analysis. It is a “safety report” where they can not even be bothered to publish the numerator or denominator, let alone publishing their methodology, analysis, controlling for variables, or accounting for bias. No self-respecting scientist or engineer would be caught dead issuing such a deficient report. In contrast, here is the report by Waymo on their first million driverless miles [2]. As you can see, it follows the basic structure of a research paper. It offers a detailed description and analysis of every individual crash. The difference in reporting is the gap between a grade school report and a proper research paper. It is an abomination that Tesla is allowed to publish such unsupported and misleading “statistics” just they can more effectively market a incomplete and unsafe product to unsuspecting consumers. [1] https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport [2] https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents/safety/Safety%20Performance%20of%20Waymo%20RO%20at%201M%20miles.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents...