6 ms·

Toyota's solid-state EV battery promises are almost as bad as Elon's full self driving timeline Only exception is that they give themselves a bit more lead tim

by eisa01 1y ago

Toyota's solid-state EV battery promises are almost as bad as Elon's full self driving timeline Only exception is that they give themselves a bit more lead time "early 2020's" in 2017. Probably because they have an interest to delay competitors EV sales, while Elon is pumping FSD sales Will be interesting to see which technology comes to market first https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/toyota-claims-a-leap-that-would-vastly-increase-electric-car-range-1513304437 https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/toyota-claims-a-leap-that-w...

simondotau 1y ago
A few choice headlines: 2017: "Toyota’s new solid-state battery could make its way to cars by 2020" https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/toyotas-new-solid-state-battery-could-make-its-way-to-cars-by-2020/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/toyotas-new-solid-state-ba... 2020: "Toyota's game-changing solid-state battery en route for 2021 debut" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400725 2023: "Toyota Touts Solid State EVs with 932-Mile Range, 10-Minute Charging by 2027" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36353474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36353474 2023: "Toyota Only Plans to Make Enough Solid-State Batteries for 10k Cars in 2030" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38374322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38374322
LightBug1 1y ago
At least there's an actual, verifiable end result for Toyota. I don't see that for Schrödinger's FSD.
- recursive 1y ago
  It's verifiable in the sense that you can check whether they followed through, and they did not? How is that better?
  - LightBug1 1y ago
    At some point, either Toyota will have delivered or not. Whereas Tesla have been saying FSD is amazing and breakthrough technology for years now and yet and, as a novelty, it is, kind of. Still needs human intervention. And I wouldn't trust my family with it at all. ymmv So, we're back at the heart of the basic criticism it's had for years. They've been selling this dud for years, and it's still not feature ready. Schrödinger.
    - recursive 1y ago
      That point can always be in the future.
      - LightBug1 1y ago
        Yes, the issue is that Tesla and its fanboys have said that point is now, or yesterday. Which is not the case.
- sixQuarks 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - slaw 1y ago
    I saw Waymo without driver behind the wheel, but never Tesla.
    - simondotau 1y ago
      Waymo had supervisors in their cars during the early months of their roll-out too.
- BurningFrog 1y ago
  All recent model Teslas can use FSD now, at least in the US. It's a $100/month subscription.
  - wewtyflakes 1y ago
    Tesla calls it "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" now, no? Seems odd to call it "full" self-driving if it has to be supervised.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - simondotau 1y ago
      I agree it's a bad choice of name, though I think the controversy is somewhat overstated. In Tesla's view, "full" is an antonym to "limited", where Autopilot designed to work on a limited class of roads. In this way, "full" was intended to describe the system's intended ability to perform the full task of piloting a vehicle, not that the system has achieved some unspoken threshold of engineering perfection. In its current state, FSD can perform complete drives without intervention almost every time. (Yes, "almost" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. But the same is true of some human drivers who hold driver licenses.) And to be fair, it's important to disambiguate technical and regulatory achievements. It is "supervised" because "unsupervised" would necessarily mean Tesla's software is the legally licensed driver of someone else's privately owned vehicle, which is a situation regulators are nowhere near contemplating. And it would require a vastly different insurance product to what is currently sold by insurers.
      - breve 1y ago
        > In this way, "full" was intended to describe the system's intended ability to perform the full task of piloting a vehicle, not that the system has achieved some unspoken threshold of engineering perfection. No. Tesla simply lied. Tesla very specifically claimed it would outperform human drivers. In 2016 Tesla claimed every Tesla car being produced had "the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver": https://web.archive.org/web/20161020091022/https://tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now-have-full-self-driving-hardware https://web.archive.org/web/20161020091022/https://tesla.com... Wasn't true then, still isn't true now.
- testing22321 1y ago
  You’ve never seen a self driving waymo, and extrapolated that to trucks and other commercial uses that will no longer need drivers?
  - bobthepanda 1y ago
    i think they are making a point about Tesla's FSD specifically and not about autonomous vehicles. We have been trying to automate trucks for one or two decades but I'm not exactly willing to bet on it getting beyond the testing phase in a specific calendar year.
  - filloooo 1y ago
    All of these need human intervention as failsafe, you just don't see them sitting in the car. A good example is those Chinese unmanned delivery vans, that's real world results of current AI driving.
0xbadcafebee 1y ago
Have you ever in your life met, or even heard of, a single person who said "I'm not buying an EV because I read a PR piece that Toyota is doing R&D on some weird cutting edge tech thing" ?
- ZeroGravitas 1y ago
  Worse, I've seen people say they are waiting for hydrogen cars. I've seen them write op-eds to that effect. Which the Japanese government and Toyota have also been pushing hard for reasons that don't appear to make any logical sense. The classic examples of "groupthink" used to be the Japanese Navy in WW2 but I think we have a new contender.
  - justin66 1y ago
    The Californian government was a big booster of hydrogen at one point. Toyota might have reaped the rewards if California had built that infrastructure out (and, to be honest, if Tesla had failed early on). Their hydrogen fuel cell technology is very good for what is. It’s just not something many people need.
justin66 1y ago
> Toyota's solid-state EV battery promises are almost as bad as Elon's full self driving timeline They’re not even in the same category. Tesla sells a feature called “full self driving.” It’s a fraud.

by eisa01 1y ago

simondotau 1y ago

A few choice headlines: 2017: "Toyota’s new solid-state battery could make its way to cars by 2020" https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/toyotas-new-solid-state-battery-could-make-its-way-to-cars-by-2020/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/toyotas-new-solid-state-ba... 2020: "Toyota's game-changing solid-state battery en route for 2021 debut" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400725 2023: "Toyota Touts Solid State EVs with 932-Mile Range, 10-Minute Charging by 2027" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36353474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36353474 2023: "Toyota Only Plans to Make Enough Solid-State Batteries for 10k Cars in 2030" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38374322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38374322

LightBug1 1y ago

At least there's an actual, verifiable end result for Toyota. I don't see that for Schrödinger's FSD.

recursive 1y ago
It's verifiable in the sense that you can check whether they followed through, and they did not? How is that better?
- LightBug1 1y ago
  At some point, either Toyota will have delivered or not. Whereas Tesla have been saying FSD is amazing and breakthrough technology for years now and yet and, as a novelty, it is, kind of. Still needs human intervention. And I wouldn't trust my family with it at all. ymmv So, we're back at the heart of the basic criticism it's had for years. They've been selling this dud for years, and it's still not feature ready. Schrödinger.
  - recursive 1y ago
    That point can always be in the future.
    - LightBug1 1y ago
      Yes, the issue is that Tesla and its fanboys have said that point is now, or yesterday. Which is not the case.
sixQuarks 1y ago
[flagged]
- slaw 1y ago
  I saw Waymo without driver behind the wheel, but never Tesla.
  - simondotau 1y ago
    Waymo had supervisors in their cars during the early months of their roll-out too.
BurningFrog 1y ago
All recent model Teslas can use FSD now, at least in the US. It's a $100/month subscription.
- wewtyflakes 1y ago
  Tesla calls it "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" now, no? Seems odd to call it "full" self-driving if it has to be supervised.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - simondotau 1y ago
    I agree it's a bad choice of name, though I think the controversy is somewhat overstated. In Tesla's view, "full" is an antonym to "limited", where Autopilot designed to work on a limited class of roads. In this way, "full" was intended to describe the system's intended ability to perform the full task of piloting a vehicle, not that the system has achieved some unspoken threshold of engineering perfection. In its current state, FSD can perform complete drives without intervention almost every time. (Yes, "almost" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. But the same is true of some human drivers who hold driver licenses.) And to be fair, it's important to disambiguate technical and regulatory achievements. It is "supervised" because "unsupervised" would necessarily mean Tesla's software is the legally licensed driver of someone else's privately owned vehicle, which is a situation regulators are nowhere near contemplating. And it would require a vastly different insurance product to what is currently sold by insurers.
    - breve 1y ago
      > In this way, "full" was intended to describe the system's intended ability to perform the full task of piloting a vehicle, not that the system has achieved some unspoken threshold of engineering perfection. No. Tesla simply lied. Tesla very specifically claimed it would outperform human drivers. In 2016 Tesla claimed every Tesla car being produced had "the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver": https://web.archive.org/web/20161020091022/https://tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now-have-full-self-driving-hardware https://web.archive.org/web/20161020091022/https://tesla.com... Wasn't true then, still isn't true now.
testing22321 1y ago
You’ve never seen a self driving waymo, and extrapolated that to trucks and other commercial uses that will no longer need drivers?
- bobthepanda 1y ago
  i think they are making a point about Tesla's FSD specifically and not about autonomous vehicles. We have been trying to automate trucks for one or two decades but I'm not exactly willing to bet on it getting beyond the testing phase in a specific calendar year.
- filloooo 1y ago
  All of these need human intervention as failsafe, you just don't see them sitting in the car. A good example is those Chinese unmanned delivery vans, that's real world results of current AI driving.

0xbadcafebee 1y ago

Have you ever in your life met, or even heard of, a single person who said "I'm not buying an EV because I read a PR piece that Toyota is doing R&D on some weird cutting edge tech thing" ?

ZeroGravitas 1y ago
Worse, I've seen people say they are waiting for hydrogen cars. I've seen them write op-eds to that effect. Which the Japanese government and Toyota have also been pushing hard for reasons that don't appear to make any logical sense. The classic examples of "groupthink" used to be the Japanese Navy in WW2 but I think we have a new contender.
- justin66 1y ago
  The Californian government was a big booster of hydrogen at one point. Toyota might have reaped the rewards if California had built that infrastructure out (and, to be honest, if Tesla had failed early on). Their hydrogen fuel cell technology is very good for what is. It’s just not something many people need.

justin66 1y ago

> Toyota's solid-state EV battery promises are almost as bad as Elon's full self driving timeline They’re not even in the same category. Tesla sells a feature called “full self driving.” It’s a fraud.