3 ms·

Tesla has been doing self driving tech for far longer than anyone else in the space, and they're not near perfect. But really it comes down to public perceptio

by vinyl7 3y ago

Tesla has been doing self driving tech for far longer than anyone else in the space, and they're not near perfect. But really it comes down to public perception right? I think it would only take a couple of big issues to make the public distrust the tech. If Cruise had issues with small taxis, a massive semi is going to be a lot more scary and cause bigger problems. The main thing is that self driving semis are fine if it's going through Nevada or death valley or some other sparsely driven road that doesn't have any intersections. But once the semi enters a suburb or big city...it's going to be an issue.

andrewmcwatters 3y ago
Doing the same thing over and over longer than anyone else isn’t progress.
TulliusCicero 3y ago
No they haven't. Google started in what, 2009? And Tesla just seems rather unserious. It's one thing to miss a prediction several years out, it's quite another to say you're confident "this year" or "next year" with specifics, repeatedly, and constantly miss by miles. Not to mention the obsession with having fewer sensors. Teslas with the FSD beta still routinely screw up basic driving tasks, not edge cases, like deciding to try and run into a cement wall straight ahead.
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
  I’ve been using Tesla FSD happily for almost a year now
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    Cool? But we're talking about L4 systems, not L2 systems that can't reliably handle even basic scenarios.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
      I did 220 miles the other day basically without intervention (only intervened a couple times because I was impatient, not because the car was doing something dangerous): FSD version 12 has, to me, basically proven that their model works and it’s just a matter of polish now. I think Tesla is being conservative about the L rating for their system because getting that wrong in a big way would ruin the company.
      - MissTake 3y ago
        Personal anecdotal experience in a car != Facts as it pertains to this story. Semi drivers do that 220 miles (and then some), each and every day, on quiet interstates and havoc strewn city highways. And we’re also talking big rigs here with significantly longer stopping distances and far less maneuverability. And they have to deal with the vagaries of weather. A fully automated rig is no good to anyone if the software decides to not proceed with no driver to override it.
        fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
        My only point is that Tesla’s system is better than people might think from comments like the original one I responded to and has done things I’ve personally experienced that commenters on Hacker News told me were “impossible” to do with a vision-based system (slow from freeway speeds to a stop because of stopped traffic ahead). The shift in attitude towards Tesla here and elsewhere is really funny to me because it coincides more or less with the time period in which Tesla started to actually deliver the things they had promised years ago.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        TulliusCicero 3y ago
        I'm not saying your experience is impossible. I'm saying that Tesla -- well, Musk -- has been talking for many years about "full self driving" and they still routinely fail at basic driving tasks. Sure, they probably succeed 99% of the time at a cement wall, or 99.9%, but that's not high enough for L4. The fact that after more than a decade of development, Teslas still have trouble identifying normal stationary obstacles in the car's path is a very bad sign. Sure, it's not outright impossible to solve this problem with a purely vision-based system -- but it IS much, much harder compared to fusing with other sensors.
ptero 3y ago
> Tesla has been doing self driving tech for far longer than anyone else in the space, and they're not near perfect. I suspect that Tesla made its life much more difficult by betting the self-driving farm on cameras. Which may have been a case of sales team overriding engineering objections. This is just a guess as I have never worked for Tesla. But I did work on detecting and tracking various things and multi-modal sensing (e.g, camera+radar) is very powerful, as some things that are hard to detect, track or ID using one sensor type will be crystal clear after adding another sensor type. > I think it would only take a couple of big issues to make the public distrust the tech. The public, at least in the rich world, has become pretty bad at understanding risks. A single unlikely but highly dramatic event will affect preferences much stronger than a much more likely, but less media-genic thing with the same outcome (e.g., the death of a single person). This is not an easy hurdle to overcome, but it is possible if self-driving companies put more energy into comparing their safety against human drivers in a simple, clean, easy to understand form. My 2c.

by vinyl7 3y ago

andrewmcwatters 3y ago

Doing the same thing over and over longer than anyone else isn’t progress.

TulliusCicero 3y ago

No they haven't. Google started in what, 2009? And Tesla just seems rather unserious. It's one thing to miss a prediction several years out, it's quite another to say you're confident "this year" or "next year" with specifics, repeatedly, and constantly miss by miles. Not to mention the obsession with having fewer sensors. Teslas with the FSD beta still routinely screw up basic driving tasks, not edge cases, like deciding to try and run into a cement wall straight ahead.

fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
I’ve been using Tesla FSD happily for almost a year now
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  Cool? But we're talking about L4 systems, not L2 systems that can't reliably handle even basic scenarios.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
    I did 220 miles the other day basically without intervention (only intervened a couple times because I was impatient, not because the car was doing something dangerous): FSD version 12 has, to me, basically proven that their model works and it’s just a matter of polish now. I think Tesla is being conservative about the L rating for their system because getting that wrong in a big way would ruin the company.
    - MissTake 3y ago
      Personal anecdotal experience in a car != Facts as it pertains to this story. Semi drivers do that 220 miles (and then some), each and every day, on quiet interstates and havoc strewn city highways. And we’re also talking big rigs here with significantly longer stopping distances and far less maneuverability. And they have to deal with the vagaries of weather. A fully automated rig is no good to anyone if the software decides to not proceed with no driver to override it.
      - fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
        My only point is that Tesla’s system is better than people might think from comments like the original one I responded to and has done things I’ve personally experienced that commenters on Hacker News told me were “impossible” to do with a vision-based system (slow from freeway speeds to a stop because of stopped traffic ahead). The shift in attitude towards Tesla here and elsewhere is really funny to me because it coincides more or less with the time period in which Tesla started to actually deliver the things they had promised years ago.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        TulliusCicero 3y ago
        I'm not saying your experience is impossible. I'm saying that Tesla -- well, Musk -- has been talking for many years about "full self driving" and they still routinely fail at basic driving tasks. Sure, they probably succeed 99% of the time at a cement wall, or 99.9%, but that's not high enough for L4. The fact that after more than a decade of development, Teslas still have trouble identifying normal stationary obstacles in the car's path is a very bad sign. Sure, it's not outright impossible to solve this problem with a purely vision-based system -- but it IS much, much harder compared to fusing with other sensors.

ptero 3y ago

> Tesla has been doing self driving tech for far longer than anyone else in the space, and they're not near perfect. I suspect that Tesla made its life much more difficult by betting the self-driving farm on cameras. Which may have been a case of sales team overriding engineering objections. This is just a guess as I have never worked for Tesla. But I did work on detecting and tracking various things and multi-modal sensing (e.g, camera+radar) is very powerful, as some things that are hard to detect, track or ID using one sensor type will be crystal clear after adding another sensor type. > I think it would only take a couple of big issues to make the public distrust the tech. The public, at least in the rich world, has become pretty bad at understanding risks. A single unlikely but highly dramatic event will affect preferences much stronger than a much more likely, but less media-genic thing with the same outcome (e.g., the death of a single person). This is not an easy hurdle to overcome, but it is possible if self-driving companies put more energy into comparing their safety against human drivers in a simple, clean, easy to understand form. My 2c.