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> The latter is closer to a Waymo or Cruise than it is to a Mercedes or GM driver assist. It depends how you look at it, but in the (super limited) cases where

by jefftk 2y ago

> The latter is closer to a Waymo or Cruise than it is to a Mercedes or GM driver assist. It depends how you look at it, but in the (super limited) cases where you can use Mercedes Drive Pilot you can legally and safely read a book, watch a movie, or work while in the driver's seat. [1] That's not the case with any Tesla product. [1] https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot

porphyra 2y ago
The MB Drive Pilot only works at ridiculously low speeds (under 40 mph), on select highways, no sharp turns, no weather, no construction zones, lanes clearly visible, etc. It's laughable to compare it against FSD which works everywhere. FSD has been flawless when driving on such easy conditions for years.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Are you assuming MB Drive Pilot couldn’t also work pretty well outside of its design domain? This argument is always so silly because it’s just an argument about the correct way to build a safe control system (i.e. with guaranteed performance characteristics in a defined operational domain) versus the incorrect way to do it (just kinda work over an ambiguously defined set of conditions and hope you don’t kill too many innocent people to cripple your business).
  - ivewonyoung 2y ago
    > Are you assuming MB Drive Pilot couldn’t also work pretty well outside of its design domain? Yes,that's a suppressed fact, not an assumption. It just follows the car in front. Check my other comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384114
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      Umm, yeah. Maybe I wasn't clear. MB Drive Pilot is designed not to attempt to operate outside of a well-defined domain. It will, by design, not operate in a way that is unsafe or in a context in which it's unsafe. You are arguing the system would perform worse in contexts in which you have not seen it perform (because its designers decided to prevent it from such attempts). What evidence do you have for your argument? Restated: You are assuming that if Mercedes engineers had a similar appetite for putting millions of innocent people at risk by operating in unreliable contexts, that their system would perform far worse than FSD does. On what basis do you make that assumption?
      - ivewonyoung 2y ago
        > What evidence do you have for your argument? The fact that their software is written only to just follow the car in front, and completely and immediately give up if there's no car in front or one cannot be seen due to it being dark or bad weather, on premapped roads. Meanwhile FSD has repeatedly shown that's it's capable of driving without a car in front. You can watch YouTube videos of FSD driving without a car in front for thousands of miles on non-premapped roads. What makes you think Mercedes would be better at doing that?
        gmueckl 2y ago
        What makes you think that MB doesn't have the same capability, but they aren't willing to ship a half-arsed highly dangerous, people killing feature like some other companies do? Unlike any of their competitors, they assume full legal liability for their car's behavior while Drive Pilot is enabled. MB also has a luxury brand reputation to maintain. When they ship a major feature like that, it absolutely has to work 100% as advertised.
        ivewonyoung 2y ago
        > Unlike any of their competitors, they assume full legal liability for their car's behavior while Drive Pilot is enabled. Source? If someone gets killed when the system is driving, there is no legal framework for you as a driver to escape criminal penalties. Who at MB are they going to jail for it? Can UPS indemnify their drivers from involuntary manslaughter charges?
- adrr 2y ago
  FSD isn't driving though, you're driving. Mercedes is driving itself and you have 10 seconds to takeover. Huge difference between level 3 and level 2. One is self driving and one is just a drivers aid.
  - mensetmanusman 2y ago
    FSD is hybrid driving.
  - ivewonyoung 2y ago
    > Mercedes is driving itself and you have 10 seconds to takeover. Huge difference between level 3 and level 2. One is self driving and one is just a drivers aid. None of that is true, it just follows the car in front in slow moving traffic during daytime in good weather on premapped roads and cannot even change lanes. No car in front anymore? It completely fails to "self"-drive. These limitations are taboo to talk about because the Mercedes system is used as an anti-Tesla talking point, you can get permanently banned from Reddit and BlueSky for bringing it up. Thats why so many people think its a great system. Edit: Downvotes for bringing up inconvenient facts.
    - jefftk 2y ago
      I'm very much aware of how Drive Pilot doesn't handle most cases: in my comment I described it as "super limited" and linked to where Mercedes describes the details. But within the range of cases where the Mercedes system is applicable (which recently went up to 59mph in Germany [1]) it's solidly better than the Tesla system because Mercedes did the engineering to make it reliable enough that you don't have to supervise the car's driving. If I had a highway commute in stop-and go traffic I'd be comfortable reading in a Mercedes, but not in a Tesla. [1] https://media.mercedes-benz.com/article/4c04b46a-05e3-4a20-930c-1ba42fa005ab https://media.mercedes-benz.com/article/4c04b46a-05e3-4a20-9...
      - ivewonyoung 2y ago
        > If I had a highway commute in stop-and go traffic I'd be comfortable reading in a Mercedes It gets dark at 4:45PM in a good chunk of the western world in winter so it won't be useful then.
boshalfoshal 2y ago
Yes there are actual "legal" notions of driver assistance "levels," but out of those 3 companies Tesla seems to be taking it the most seriously. Elon has a high conviction in the product and has continued to pour billions of dollars in GPUs, talent, supply chains, etc to make it happen. Other manufacturers don't take it nearly as seriously, unfortunately. Sure you might not be able to legally claim that a Tesla is totally "autonomous," but the fact of the matter (to me, at least) is that they are putting in way more effort to solve the problem than legacy auto manufacturers are. I can step into a Tesla today, press a destination, and go there without touching the wheel or pedals. Sure it won't be flawless but the fact is, I can. I can't do the same in any other consumer car, and the closest thing is a Waymo. The effort is there, I think its just a matter of time before we start seeing the legal stuff play out.
- jefftk 2y ago
  I think there's some chance that Tesla's approach will work out for them, but I'm not optimistic. Getting self-driving software to "impressively good" happened pretty quickly, and even systems from 2016 would usually pass your "go there without touching the wheel or pedals" test. But from there to "as safe as a human" let alone "as safe as we require human-replacing machines to be" turns out to be quite a hard gap to cross.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 2y ago
    There’s no comparison between what was available when I bought my Tesla in 2020 and what I have today.
    - jefftk 2y ago
      When you say "what was available" do you mean what a Tesla was capable of? Because I was trying to talk about things like Cruise driving for 90min at night in a city with no intervention: https://youtu.be/KSRPmng1cmA https://youtu.be/KSRPmng1cmA
      - 2y ago
judge2020 2y ago
How do I file a claim for an accident it causes?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
kccqzy 2y ago
I'm sure legally yes, but tell that to a cop who stopped you.
norlygfyd 2y ago
And in those same cases, you could probably safely do the same with FSD (s), but because FSD isn't as limited and the Mercedes product is not a serious competitor, there's no compelling reason for allowing it.

by jefftk 2y ago

porphyra 2y ago

The MB Drive Pilot only works at ridiculously low speeds (under 40 mph), on select highways, no sharp turns, no weather, no construction zones, lanes clearly visible, etc. It's laughable to compare it against FSD which works everywhere. FSD has been flawless when driving on such easy conditions for years.

llamaimperative 2y ago
Are you assuming MB Drive Pilot couldn’t also work pretty well outside of its design domain? This argument is always so silly because it’s just an argument about the correct way to build a safe control system (i.e. with guaranteed performance characteristics in a defined operational domain) versus the incorrect way to do it (just kinda work over an ambiguously defined set of conditions and hope you don’t kill too many innocent people to cripple your business).
- ivewonyoung 2y ago
  > Are you assuming MB Drive Pilot couldn’t also work pretty well outside of its design domain? Yes,that's a suppressed fact, not an assumption. It just follows the car in front. Check my other comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384114
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Umm, yeah. Maybe I wasn't clear. MB Drive Pilot is designed not to attempt to operate outside of a well-defined domain. It will, by design, not operate in a way that is unsafe or in a context in which it's unsafe. You are arguing the system would perform worse in contexts in which you have not seen it perform (because its designers decided to prevent it from such attempts). What evidence do you have for your argument? Restated: You are assuming that if Mercedes engineers had a similar appetite for putting millions of innocent people at risk by operating in unreliable contexts, that their system would perform far worse than FSD does. On what basis do you make that assumption?
    - ivewonyoung 2y ago
      > What evidence do you have for your argument? The fact that their software is written only to just follow the car in front, and completely and immediately give up if there's no car in front or one cannot be seen due to it being dark or bad weather, on premapped roads. Meanwhile FSD has repeatedly shown that's it's capable of driving without a car in front. You can watch YouTube videos of FSD driving without a car in front for thousands of miles on non-premapped roads. What makes you think Mercedes would be better at doing that?
      - gmueckl 2y ago
        What makes you think that MB doesn't have the same capability, but they aren't willing to ship a half-arsed highly dangerous, people killing feature like some other companies do? Unlike any of their competitors, they assume full legal liability for their car's behavior while Drive Pilot is enabled. MB also has a luxury brand reputation to maintain. When they ship a major feature like that, it absolutely has to work 100% as advertised.
        ivewonyoung 2y ago
        > Unlike any of their competitors, they assume full legal liability for their car's behavior while Drive Pilot is enabled. Source? If someone gets killed when the system is driving, there is no legal framework for you as a driver to escape criminal penalties. Who at MB are they going to jail for it? Can UPS indemnify their drivers from involuntary manslaughter charges?
adrr 2y ago
FSD isn't driving though, you're driving. Mercedes is driving itself and you have 10 seconds to takeover. Huge difference between level 3 and level 2. One is self driving and one is just a drivers aid.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  FSD is hybrid driving.
- ivewonyoung 2y ago
  > Mercedes is driving itself and you have 10 seconds to takeover. Huge difference between level 3 and level 2. One is self driving and one is just a drivers aid. None of that is true, it just follows the car in front in slow moving traffic during daytime in good weather on premapped roads and cannot even change lanes. No car in front anymore? It completely fails to "self"-drive. These limitations are taboo to talk about because the Mercedes system is used as an anti-Tesla talking point, you can get permanently banned from Reddit and BlueSky for bringing it up. Thats why so many people think its a great system. Edit: Downvotes for bringing up inconvenient facts.
  - jefftk 2y ago
    I'm very much aware of how Drive Pilot doesn't handle most cases: in my comment I described it as "super limited" and linked to where Mercedes describes the details. But within the range of cases where the Mercedes system is applicable (which recently went up to 59mph in Germany [1]) it's solidly better than the Tesla system because Mercedes did the engineering to make it reliable enough that you don't have to supervise the car's driving. If I had a highway commute in stop-and go traffic I'd be comfortable reading in a Mercedes, but not in a Tesla. [1] https://media.mercedes-benz.com/article/4c04b46a-05e3-4a20-930c-1ba42fa005ab https://media.mercedes-benz.com/article/4c04b46a-05e3-4a20-9...
    - ivewonyoung 2y ago
      > If I had a highway commute in stop-and go traffic I'd be comfortable reading in a Mercedes It gets dark at 4:45PM in a good chunk of the western world in winter so it won't be useful then.

boshalfoshal 2y ago

Yes there are actual "legal" notions of driver assistance "levels," but out of those 3 companies Tesla seems to be taking it the most seriously. Elon has a high conviction in the product and has continued to pour billions of dollars in GPUs, talent, supply chains, etc to make it happen. Other manufacturers don't take it nearly as seriously, unfortunately. Sure you might not be able to legally claim that a Tesla is totally "autonomous," but the fact of the matter (to me, at least) is that they are putting in way more effort to solve the problem than legacy auto manufacturers are. I can step into a Tesla today, press a destination, and go there without touching the wheel or pedals. Sure it won't be flawless but the fact is, I can. I can't do the same in any other consumer car, and the closest thing is a Waymo. The effort is there, I think its just a matter of time before we start seeing the legal stuff play out.

jefftk 2y ago
I think there's some chance that Tesla's approach will work out for them, but I'm not optimistic. Getting self-driving software to "impressively good" happened pretty quickly, and even systems from 2016 would usually pass your "go there without touching the wheel or pedals" test. But from there to "as safe as a human" let alone "as safe as we require human-replacing machines to be" turns out to be quite a hard gap to cross.
- fiddlerwoaroof 2y ago
  There’s no comparison between what was available when I bought my Tesla in 2020 and what I have today.
  - jefftk 2y ago
    When you say "what was available" do you mean what a Tesla was capable of? Because I was trying to talk about things like Cruise driving for 90min at night in a city with no intervention: https://youtu.be/KSRPmng1cmA https://youtu.be/KSRPmng1cmA
    - 2y ago

judge2020 2y ago

How do I file a claim for an accident it causes?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

kccqzy 2y ago

I'm sure legally yes, but tell that to a cop who stopped you.

norlygfyd 2y ago

And in those same cases, you could probably safely do the same with FSD (s), but because FSD isn't as limited and the Mercedes product is not a serious competitor, there's no compelling reason for allowing it.