7 ms·

"Full Self-Driving" doesn't imply autonomy, Tesla engineer says

59 points by ra7 3y ago

JoeAltmaier 3y ago
They are so totally full of shit. Sorry, that's against the site rules and all. But what else is there to say about such colossal delusion and doubletalk? If they'd said, for instance, 'full driving' we'd have thought sure, it has all the features but still, take care it might be buggy. If they'd said 'self driving' again we'd think, it can do it but maybe not in all circumstances. But they said it all; 'Full self-driving' means it does the whole enchilada. It can mean nothing else. It's normal English, well-understood by anybody who is listening. No ambiguity. No wiggle room. These guys ought to be enjoined to stop selling their irresponsible death machines.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  And Tesla was even clearer about the intended capabilities of FSD in their 2016 promo video: > "The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself." No reasonable person would interpret that as coming with the implied caveat of "but that person might need to intervene at any moment".
- l33t7332273 3y ago
  I agree completely that claiming full self driving is a marketing term that means anything but complete autonomy is just a straight up lie.
- TheAlchemist 3y ago
  It's mind blowing what Tesla and Musk are allowed to do. And don't get me started about the doubletalk ! Musk clearly thinks he's above the law now (and for some reason, this seems to be the case for now). There are countless other examples, some are not even debatable. For example, when he bought the first 9% of Twitter. Legally, he should have disclose that at 5% threshold - which he did not. It's estimated that it saved him ~$150 million. There is nothing to debate - the law is clear, and he intentionally did not disclose his buying. One would think that it's not a complicated case, yet still 1 year after there is nothing done ! Nothing. SEC is suing him now, but ... not really for wrongdoing ! They want to bring him to testify. I don't know what's going on, but clearly he's getting a lot of free passes.
  - polygamous_bat 3y ago
    That’s the problem when you get too big, isn’t it? Musk now has $149 million extra that he can spend on fighting legal battles with the SEC and still come out at least a million ahead. Does the SEC have $149m in spare resources to fight this fight? Unfortunately this is the math I believe the enforcement agencies have to do.
    - deadbolt 3y ago
      What does $149M get you in a legal argument? I realize this must seem like a very naive question, but if the law said "you must disclose at 5%", and someone fails to do so, shouldn't that be a simple case?
- malablaster 3y ago
  Between the lies about battery capacity and this, Tesla is not to be trusted.
- ocdtrekkie 3y ago
  I've said it before: We're past the point Elon is solely responsible. We need to start looking at the blatant negligence of government officials at both state and federal levels for letting him get away with it for so long. We are so far past the point anyone could possibly believe anyone letting this continue has good intentions.
- userbinator 3y ago
  More like "Fool, Self-Driving".
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- fastball 3y ago
  It is (was?) actually called Full Self-Driving Beta, which to an engineer does explicitly indicate that bugs are to be expected. Not sure if they're still calling it Beta, but at the time of this accident they certainly were.
  - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
    Is that like 'fresh frozen'? If it's Beta, then it's 'Beta Self-driving'. Not yet 'Full'. Obviously. Still doubletalk. Still indefensible.
- ethagknight 3y ago
  Nikola, the EV truck company, was full of shit. The truck couldn't drive under its own power. Tesla FSD on the other hand, is just not as good as advertised. Kinda like how a Lindt Truffle isn't velvety bliss, or a 787 Dreamliner is still hard to sleep on, or even BMW's excessively superlative "ultimate driving machine." The 4 cylinder Z3 was a terrible vehicle. One can wish FSD means perfection in every circumstance all the time, and Tesla certainly implied in its marketing that it is. In reality, FSD is really amazing at times and 'what-the-hell was it thinking' at times. But it does control speed, steering, braking, obstacle avoidance, traffic maneuvering, parking, navigation in a manner that, yes, I would call "Full Self Driving." It is very far from perfect, and Tesla has certainly communicated it as being better than it really is. there's a high dose of caveat emptor, but FSD does a lot more than any other car I've ever driven or owned. The fact that I will not let it attempt to navigate certain intersections, either out of embarrassment or risk of getting hit, does not diminish the fact that my car will give it the ol' college try. I do think Tesla should get a substantial hand slap though, and should be required to give an extended free trial to everyone to see exactly what it is that FSD can and cannot do, and also give those who purchased FSD outright an extended refund window.
  - frob 3y ago
    The difference between saying your car is "the ultimate driving experience" and that your car has a "full self driving" mode is the difference between puffery and straight up fraud.
    - ethagknight 3y ago
      One should be taken literally in every circumstance, but the other shouldn't?
      - TheAlchemist 3y ago
        How do you take 'ultimate driving experience' literally ? Taking your initial analogy, it's the difference between not sleeping well in the 787 Dreamliner, vs said Dreamliner crashing before landing.
7e 3y ago
The original (apparently staged) FSD promo video featured a tagline which read, “The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.” What a dangerous fraud.
- fastball 3y ago
  Source on that being staged?
  - duskwuff 3y ago
    Reported by numerous news agencies in early 2023, e.g. https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-video-promoting-self-driving-was-staged-engineer-testifies-2023-01-17/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-video-promoting-sel...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
quantified 3y ago
As reported, he seems to only be saying "there might be bugs". The "certain limitations" had better have been explored by the plaintiff lawyers. I'd hate to be the engineer caught between perjury and Musk's interests. It'd take a lot of RSUs to compensate.
sharts 3y ago
So it’s like when “Synthetic” motor oil doesn’t actually mean the oil is synthetic because “synthetic” != “100% synthetic” ? Words have no meaning anymore. Up is down. Left is right.
- freeone3000 3y ago
  All of synthetic motor oil is a synthesis of components, individually chosen and assembled. It is an engineered product, as opposed to natural motor oil, which is a naturally-ocurring product that has been refined. Both being fossil fuel petrocarbons is neither here nor there — it’s not a claim made.
dmitshur 3y ago
This makes me think of a recent experience I can relate to. I got a new iPhone that has a feature called, and I quote, an "Always-On display." According to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213435 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213435: Always-On display goes dark when you don't need it To save battery life, the display is completely dark when: • Your iPhone is lying face down • Your iPhone is in your pocket or bag • [...] These seem reasonable to me, at least they haven't caused any noticeable problems. But it goes on, including: • You haven't used your iPhone for a while (your iPhone learns your activity patterns and turns the display off and on accordingly, including if you set up an alarm or sleep schedule) This one's kinda infuriating. Every now and then, it's dark when I look at it, and I try to repeatedly "teach" it that I'm not asleep and it shouldn't have gone dark, or give up and try to ignore that it's not doing what I expected from it. What makes it frustrating more than anything is the feature's name: "Always-On display." If not for that, I think its actual best-effort behavior is fairly reasonable.
- psunavy03 3y ago
  iOS has been driving me batty ever since they decided that you don't actually want a cursor, you must want to select a whole word.
  - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
    Now the only way to get a cursor is to tap and hold. Why this change? Was double tapping to select a word too difficult to understand for most users. It’s not like tap and hold to get a cursor to insert words/punctuation is any more intuitive.
    - mslt 3y ago
      You can hold down the space bar on the keyboard and drag to open a full-featured cursor
  - mslt 3y ago
    Touch and hold space, you receive haptic feedback and you can drag the cursor at will, using the keyboard pane as a touchpad
m0llusk 3y ago
But what does ChatGPT think about autonomy and what it implies? Asking for a friend.
ggm 3y ago
Watching law happen in the media is funny. I don't think a reasonable person test would work here. "Nobody would believe it really was self driving" is trying to say "when we said that, we didn't mean that" which simply swaps one lawsuit (risk to the community) for another (you lied to the SEC) I don't have a time machine, so it's a bit untestable but what do you, reasonable HN readers think the person in the street would say if you vox-pop'd "what does FSD mean" Fully is pretty well understood. Self has a really specific meaning. Driving.. is what happens to make cars move safely, or not. But "Fully self driving" actually means "not fully self driving" .. ok.. how did the "not" get in there?
akerl_ 3y ago
I have a Tesla. I'm eligible for the FSD beta. Autopilot is great. It does the boring repetitive parts of driving. It behaves predictably in response to stimuli, and generally errs on the side of caution. This causes it to be suboptimal in ways that the driver can account for. As an example: when making lane changes, Autopilot is very sluggish, to the point that if there's any traffic at all, you have to give it a kick on the accelerator to complete the move. FSD is a trashfire. I'd say the closest description is like you're constantly supervising a 15 year old learning to drive for the first time. Where I live, it'll disregard no-right-on-red and creep past stop lines that are set back from a light. It'll try to take turns and then lose track of which lane it wanted. The cognitive load of babysitting FSD is worse than just doing the driving myself.
- userbinator 3y ago
  I'd say the closest description is like you're constantly supervising a 15 year old learning to drive for the first time. This is precisely it. It'll work a lot of the time, deceptively well, but you need to be as attentive as a driving instructor to intervene when it makes a mistake.
- starik36 3y ago
  When you say Autopilot, you mean AutoSteer, right?
  - WXLCKNO 3y ago
    My BMW has lane assist and lane switching that's fast and reliable + adaptive cruise. Don't think I'm missing much of the Tesla experience.
    - justapassenger 3y ago
      Autopilot is nowadays nothing special. Majority of cars have (at least as options) systems that are often better (for example, with much much less phantom braking).
    - wolverine876 3y ago
codeTired 3y ago
Absolute bullshit. Musk has been saying that you will be able to have your Tesla earn money for you as a robotaxi lmao. Maybe I should “fully pay”(make a deposit) on their car then refuse to actually fully pay because that doesn’t imply fully paying. Absolute donkeys.
- RajT88 3y ago
  I had forgotten about that sales pitch! Must have gotten quietly walked back when the problem of self-driving proved to be hard. Timely prime day deal: https://a.co/d/aB43NSC https://a.co/d/aB43NSC
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
The obvious question to me is that if "Full Self-Driving" doesn't imply autonomy, what is it supposed to imply? Here is the relevant quote from the article: > While testifying last week, Tesla engineer Eloy Rubio Blanco repudiated the allegations that the name “Full Self-Driving” was chosen to deceive the public. Blanco stated that Tesla drivers did not believe that their vehicles were autonomous. It doesn't say anywhere else how he thinks the public is supposed to interpret "full self-driving." As a native speaker of English, I'm baffled to think of what else it could be intended to mean.
- toomanyrichies 3y ago
  > if "Full Self-Driving" doesn't imply autonomy, what is it supposed to imply? 100% agree. Furthermore, if neither "Full Self-Driving" nor "Autopilot" are meant to imply autonomy, what term of art would imply that? Both of those terms imply autonomy IMHO, and if we're proposing to (eventually) introduce a 3rd term which Tesla agrees would imply autonomy, then it feels like splitting hairs to try and argue that the first two don't but the 3rd does.
  - pnpnp 3y ago
    Tesla’s marketing is awful, but “autopilot” has historically not meant “fully autonomous.” IMO Tesla adopted this term and twisted it. Airplane autopilots still require a large amount of pilot input to operate.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      > Airplane autopilots still require a large amount of pilot input to operate. True or not, few people know that.
      - pnpnp 3y ago
        Exactly where Tesla’s marketing failed. It irritates me as a pilot that they have given it a new definition. Autopilots have been around a long time, and have a very specific meaning. They require training, knowing what their limitations are, constant monitoring, and frequent manual input. I’m not sure what Tesla thought they were doing by billing it as a “hands off” term.
pengaru 3y ago
[flagged]
brandonmenc 3y ago
It's hilarious seeing hn turn on Musk and Tesla (and self-driving cars in general) after years of being told here that "you just don't get it" when pointing out the absurdity of Tesla being worth more than all the other auto companies combined.
- orwin 3y ago
  No, I think in general HN has been more wary/skeptic of Musk than the general public. The turning point to me was the pedophilia accusation against someone actually saving kids, but since Solar city at least you could find people extremely critical (and since then I've looked at the solar city video critically and people here were right, it was oil salesman tactics)
  - brandonmenc 3y ago
    We must have been using totally different sites, then. Go read the comments on any Tesla story here circa 2015-2018 [0] for a good laugh. The majority of people here were delusional re: Tesla and Musk. [[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1514764800&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1420070400&page=0&prefix=false&query=tesla&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1514764800&dateRange=custom&...
    - timeon 3y ago
      I have checked first two threads from your link and most people there were skeptical. Those that were not are not in today's thread. Even if there was not skepticism before, it would be naive to think that it is the same crowd as today.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    My experience matches the GP: It was a cult of personality (or lots of astroturfing).
- rsynnott 3y ago
  HN, generally speaking, is _very_ vulnerable to hype. It has, collectively, largely dismissed crypto-stuff now, for instance, but it took a _long time_. Up to a few years ago, any story about Bitcoin (or even more obviously nonsense crypto things like DAOs and NFTs) had comments full of breathless “this will change the world” energy.
Tommstein 3y ago
Yeah it does, everyone who knows English says.
wilg 3y ago
The name really doesn’t matter. I don’t know why everyone is always arguing about it. It’s very clear that it isn’t autonomous when you buy and use it, and that most of what you’re buying is future updates.
- takeda 3y ago
  It was very clear when Elon said it will work like Uber.
- sidibe 3y ago
  Watch the feature video on www.tesla.com/autopilot. It has been there since 2016 claiming the driver is just there for legal reasons. Nothing is clear except that Tesla wants customers to think they sell autonomous cars. Of course they also insist the opposite when convenient There's been much written about how fake the video is as well, including it actually getting into an accident during one of the many takes. Let's not defend blatant fraud.
  - wilg 3y ago
    Then why does that page also say this? > Full Self-Driving Capability > All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances. The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat. > The future use of these features without supervision is dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving capabilities are introduced, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates. It is certainly easier to make your case if you look only at that one video from 2016 which was released as a tech demo and pretend that is the only thing Tesla has ever said about it and that anyone mistook that for something your car could do at the time. (A Tesla can in fact do that today, other than transitioning from self-driving to parked.)
    - sidibe 3y ago
koonsolo 3y ago
"Full Self-Driving" is obviously not full self driving ;).
r0ckarong 3y ago
"We can't make this work" says employee of notorious liar.

59 points by ra7 3y ago

They are so totally full of shit. Sorry, that's against the site rules and all. But what else is there to say about such colossal delusion and doubletalk? If they'd said, for instance, 'full driving' we'd have thought sure, it has all the features but still, take care it might be buggy. If they'd said 'self driving' again we'd think, it can do it but maybe not in all circumstances. But they said it all; 'Full self-driving' means it does the whole enchilada. It can mean nothing else. It's normal English, well-understood by anybody who is listening. No ambiguity. No wiggle room. These guys ought to be enjoined to stop selling their irresponsible death machines.

duskwuff 3y ago
And Tesla was even clearer about the intended capabilities of FSD in their 2016 promo video: > "The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself." No reasonable person would interpret that as coming with the implied caveat of "but that person might need to intervene at any moment".
l33t7332273 3y ago
I agree completely that claiming full self driving is a marketing term that means anything but complete autonomy is just a straight up lie.
TheAlchemist 3y ago
It's mind blowing what Tesla and Musk are allowed to do. And don't get me started about the doubletalk ! Musk clearly thinks he's above the law now (and for some reason, this seems to be the case for now). There are countless other examples, some are not even debatable. For example, when he bought the first 9% of Twitter. Legally, he should have disclose that at 5% threshold - which he did not. It's estimated that it saved him ~$150 million. There is nothing to debate - the law is clear, and he intentionally did not disclose his buying. One would think that it's not a complicated case, yet still 1 year after there is nothing done ! Nothing. SEC is suing him now, but ... not really for wrongdoing ! They want to bring him to testify. I don't know what's going on, but clearly he's getting a lot of free passes.
- polygamous_bat 3y ago
  That’s the problem when you get too big, isn’t it? Musk now has $149 million extra that he can spend on fighting legal battles with the SEC and still come out at least a million ahead. Does the SEC have $149m in spare resources to fight this fight? Unfortunately this is the math I believe the enforcement agencies have to do.
  - deadbolt 3y ago
    What does $149M get you in a legal argument? I realize this must seem like a very naive question, but if the law said "you must disclose at 5%", and someone fails to do so, shouldn't that be a simple case?
malablaster 3y ago
Between the lies about battery capacity and this, Tesla is not to be trusted.
ocdtrekkie 3y ago
I've said it before: We're past the point Elon is solely responsible. We need to start looking at the blatant negligence of government officials at both state and federal levels for letting him get away with it for so long. We are so far past the point anyone could possibly believe anyone letting this continue has good intentions.
userbinator 3y ago
More like "Fool, Self-Driving".
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fastball 3y ago
It is (was?) actually called Full Self-Driving Beta, which to an engineer does explicitly indicate that bugs are to be expected. Not sure if they're still calling it Beta, but at the time of this accident they certainly were.
- JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  Is that like 'fresh frozen'? If it's Beta, then it's 'Beta Self-driving'. Not yet 'Full'. Obviously. Still doubletalk. Still indefensible.
ethagknight 3y ago
Nikola, the EV truck company, was full of shit. The truck couldn't drive under its own power. Tesla FSD on the other hand, is just not as good as advertised. Kinda like how a Lindt Truffle isn't velvety bliss, or a 787 Dreamliner is still hard to sleep on, or even BMW's excessively superlative "ultimate driving machine." The 4 cylinder Z3 was a terrible vehicle. One can wish FSD means perfection in every circumstance all the time, and Tesla certainly implied in its marketing that it is. In reality, FSD is really amazing at times and 'what-the-hell was it thinking' at times. But it does control speed, steering, braking, obstacle avoidance, traffic maneuvering, parking, navigation in a manner that, yes, I would call "Full Self Driving." It is very far from perfect, and Tesla has certainly communicated it as being better than it really is. there's a high dose of caveat emptor, but FSD does a lot more than any other car I've ever driven or owned. The fact that I will not let it attempt to navigate certain intersections, either out of embarrassment or risk of getting hit, does not diminish the fact that my car will give it the ol' college try. I do think Tesla should get a substantial hand slap though, and should be required to give an extended free trial to everyone to see exactly what it is that FSD can and cannot do, and also give those who purchased FSD outright an extended refund window.
- frob 3y ago
  The difference between saying your car is "the ultimate driving experience" and that your car has a "full self driving" mode is the difference between puffery and straight up fraud.
  - ethagknight 3y ago
    One should be taken literally in every circumstance, but the other shouldn't?
    - TheAlchemist 3y ago
      How do you take 'ultimate driving experience' literally ? Taking your initial analogy, it's the difference between not sleeping well in the 787 Dreamliner, vs said Dreamliner crashing before landing.

7e 3y ago

The original (apparently staged) FSD promo video featured a tagline which read, “The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.” What a dangerous fraud.

fastball 3y ago
Source on that being staged?
- duskwuff 3y ago
  Reported by numerous news agencies in early 2023, e.g. https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-video-promoting-self-driving-was-staged-engineer-testifies-2023-01-17/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-video-promoting-sel...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

quantified 3y ago

As reported, he seems to only be saying "there might be bugs". The "certain limitations" had better have been explored by the plaintiff lawyers. I'd hate to be the engineer caught between perjury and Musk's interests. It'd take a lot of RSUs to compensate.

sharts 3y ago

So it’s like when “Synthetic” motor oil doesn’t actually mean the oil is synthetic because “synthetic” != “100% synthetic” ? Words have no meaning anymore. Up is down. Left is right.

freeone3000 3y ago
All of synthetic motor oil is a synthesis of components, individually chosen and assembled. It is an engineered product, as opposed to natural motor oil, which is a naturally-ocurring product that has been refined. Both being fossil fuel petrocarbons is neither here nor there — it’s not a claim made.

dmitshur 3y ago

This makes me think of a recent experience I can relate to. I got a new iPhone that has a feature called, and I quote, an "Always-On display." According to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213435 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213435: Always-On display goes dark when you don't need it To save battery life, the display is completely dark when: • Your iPhone is lying face down • Your iPhone is in your pocket or bag • [...] These seem reasonable to me, at least they haven't caused any noticeable problems. But it goes on, including: • You haven't used your iPhone for a while (your iPhone learns your activity patterns and turns the display off and on accordingly, including if you set up an alarm or sleep schedule) This one's kinda infuriating. Every now and then, it's dark when I look at it, and I try to repeatedly "teach" it that I'm not asleep and it shouldn't have gone dark, or give up and try to ignore that it's not doing what I expected from it. What makes it frustrating more than anything is the feature's name: "Always-On display." If not for that, I think its actual best-effort behavior is fairly reasonable.

psunavy03 3y ago
iOS has been driving me batty ever since they decided that you don't actually want a cursor, you must want to select a whole word.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  Now the only way to get a cursor is to tap and hold. Why this change? Was double tapping to select a word too difficult to understand for most users. It’s not like tap and hold to get a cursor to insert words/punctuation is any more intuitive.
  - mslt 3y ago
    You can hold down the space bar on the keyboard and drag to open a full-featured cursor
- mslt 3y ago
  Touch and hold space, you receive haptic feedback and you can drag the cursor at will, using the keyboard pane as a touchpad

m0llusk 3y ago

But what does ChatGPT think about autonomy and what it implies? Asking for a friend.

ggm 3y ago

Watching law happen in the media is funny. I don't think a reasonable person test would work here. "Nobody would believe it really was self driving" is trying to say "when we said that, we didn't mean that" which simply swaps one lawsuit (risk to the community) for another (you lied to the SEC) I don't have a time machine, so it's a bit untestable but what do you, reasonable HN readers think the person in the street would say if you vox-pop'd "what does FSD mean" Fully is pretty well understood. Self has a really specific meaning. Driving.. is what happens to make cars move safely, or not. But "Fully self driving" actually means "not fully self driving" .. ok.. how did the "not" get in there?

akerl_ 3y ago

I have a Tesla. I'm eligible for the FSD beta. Autopilot is great. It does the boring repetitive parts of driving. It behaves predictably in response to stimuli, and generally errs on the side of caution. This causes it to be suboptimal in ways that the driver can account for. As an example: when making lane changes, Autopilot is very sluggish, to the point that if there's any traffic at all, you have to give it a kick on the accelerator to complete the move. FSD is a trashfire. I'd say the closest description is like you're constantly supervising a 15 year old learning to drive for the first time. Where I live, it'll disregard no-right-on-red and creep past stop lines that are set back from a light. It'll try to take turns and then lose track of which lane it wanted. The cognitive load of babysitting FSD is worse than just doing the driving myself.

userbinator 3y ago
I'd say the closest description is like you're constantly supervising a 15 year old learning to drive for the first time. This is precisely it. It'll work a lot of the time, deceptively well, but you need to be as attentive as a driving instructor to intervene when it makes a mistake.
starik36 3y ago
When you say Autopilot, you mean AutoSteer, right?
- WXLCKNO 3y ago
  My BMW has lane assist and lane switching that's fast and reliable + adaptive cruise. Don't think I'm missing much of the Tesla experience.
  - justapassenger 3y ago
    Autopilot is nowadays nothing special. Majority of cars have (at least as options) systems that are often better (for example, with much much less phantom braking).
  - wolverine876 3y ago

codeTired 3y ago

Absolute bullshit. Musk has been saying that you will be able to have your Tesla earn money for you as a robotaxi lmao. Maybe I should “fully pay”(make a deposit) on their car then refuse to actually fully pay because that doesn’t imply fully paying. Absolute donkeys.

RajT88 3y ago
I had forgotten about that sales pitch! Must have gotten quietly walked back when the problem of self-driving proved to be hard. Timely prime day deal: https://a.co/d/aB43NSC https://a.co/d/aB43NSC

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

The obvious question to me is that if "Full Self-Driving" doesn't imply autonomy, what is it supposed to imply? Here is the relevant quote from the article: > While testifying last week, Tesla engineer Eloy Rubio Blanco repudiated the allegations that the name “Full Self-Driving” was chosen to deceive the public. Blanco stated that Tesla drivers did not believe that their vehicles were autonomous. It doesn't say anywhere else how he thinks the public is supposed to interpret "full self-driving." As a native speaker of English, I'm baffled to think of what else it could be intended to mean.

toomanyrichies 3y ago
> if "Full Self-Driving" doesn't imply autonomy, what is it supposed to imply? 100% agree. Furthermore, if neither "Full Self-Driving" nor "Autopilot" are meant to imply autonomy, what term of art would imply that? Both of those terms imply autonomy IMHO, and if we're proposing to (eventually) introduce a 3rd term which Tesla agrees would imply autonomy, then it feels like splitting hairs to try and argue that the first two don't but the 3rd does.
- pnpnp 3y ago
  Tesla’s marketing is awful, but “autopilot” has historically not meant “fully autonomous.” IMO Tesla adopted this term and twisted it. Airplane autopilots still require a large amount of pilot input to operate.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    > Airplane autopilots still require a large amount of pilot input to operate. True or not, few people know that.
    - pnpnp 3y ago
      Exactly where Tesla’s marketing failed. It irritates me as a pilot that they have given it a new definition. Autopilots have been around a long time, and have a very specific meaning. They require training, knowing what their limitations are, constant monitoring, and frequent manual input. I’m not sure what Tesla thought they were doing by billing it as a “hands off” term.

pengaru 3y ago

[flagged]

brandonmenc 3y ago

It's hilarious seeing hn turn on Musk and Tesla (and self-driving cars in general) after years of being told here that "you just don't get it" when pointing out the absurdity of Tesla being worth more than all the other auto companies combined.

orwin 3y ago
No, I think in general HN has been more wary/skeptic of Musk than the general public. The turning point to me was the pedophilia accusation against someone actually saving kids, but since Solar city at least you could find people extremely critical (and since then I've looked at the solar city video critically and people here were right, it was oil salesman tactics)
- brandonmenc 3y ago
  We must have been using totally different sites, then. Go read the comments on any Tesla story here circa 2015-2018 [0] for a good laugh. The majority of people here were delusional re: Tesla and Musk. [[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1514764800&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1420070400&page=0&prefix=false&query=tesla&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1514764800&dateRange=custom&...
  - timeon 3y ago
    I have checked first two threads from your link and most people there were skeptical. Those that were not are not in today's thread. Even if there was not skepticism before, it would be naive to think that it is the same crowd as today.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  My experience matches the GP: It was a cult of personality (or lots of astroturfing).
rsynnott 3y ago
HN, generally speaking, is _very_ vulnerable to hype. It has, collectively, largely dismissed crypto-stuff now, for instance, but it took a _long time_. Up to a few years ago, any story about Bitcoin (or even more obviously nonsense crypto things like DAOs and NFTs) had comments full of breathless “this will change the world” energy.

Tommstein 3y ago

Yeah it does, everyone who knows English says.

wilg 3y ago

The name really doesn’t matter. I don’t know why everyone is always arguing about it. It’s very clear that it isn’t autonomous when you buy and use it, and that most of what you’re buying is future updates.

takeda 3y ago
It was very clear when Elon said it will work like Uber.
sidibe 3y ago
Watch the feature video on www.tesla.com/autopilot. It has been there since 2016 claiming the driver is just there for legal reasons. Nothing is clear except that Tesla wants customers to think they sell autonomous cars. Of course they also insist the opposite when convenient There's been much written about how fake the video is as well, including it actually getting into an accident during one of the many takes. Let's not defend blatant fraud.
- wilg 3y ago
  Then why does that page also say this? > Full Self-Driving Capability > All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances. The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat. > The future use of these features without supervision is dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving capabilities are introduced, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates. It is certainly easier to make your case if you look only at that one video from 2016 which was released as a tech demo and pretend that is the only thing Tesla has ever said about it and that anyone mistook that for something your car could do at the time. (A Tesla can in fact do that today, other than transitioning from self-driving to parked.)
  - sidibe 3y ago

koonsolo 3y ago

"Full Self-Driving" is obviously not full self driving ;).

r0ckarong 3y ago

"We can't make this work" says employee of notorious liar.