“Translation: all the times Tesla has vowed that all of its vehicles would soon be capable of fully driving themselves may have been a convenient act of salesmanship that ultimately turned out not to be true.”
Another way to say that, is Tesla scammed all of their customers, since you know, everyone saw this coming…
Still no LiDAR.
“Trust me, you just need to buy more compute for your car. We’ll figure out reliable driving by sight someday.”
I’m happily using all the sensors my car offers, even if I’m pretty ok with driving by eyesight. Better sensors that can easily see through fog/rain/snow/whatever? Hell yeah, give them to me.
LiDAR in particular actually kinda sucks at those conditions (basically any form of precipitation). It’s really only good in clear environments.
LiDAR can be done with different wavelengths. It should be possible to make one that can see through rain and snow.
If you shift the spectrum enough, you get Radar.
Agreed. But you don’t have to go that far to make rain and snow transparent. And radar might not be a bad idea to have on self driving cars, as long as it’s not the only thing.
Elon Musks make engineering orders of magnitude more difficult. Those poor Tesla neoslaves
They were on the path of self driving cars till Musk pulled the plug on the LiDAR and opted for cameras (cost less). He is directly responsible for why autopilot isn’t so auto.
And, since it’s a car and not a plane, also not so pilot.
It’s not a boat either, so no pilot x2.
To be fair, the LiDAR was primarily used for parking. Still a stupid decision to remove it. There were plenty of values it provides…but those cars were never going to drive themselves even if they did have LiDAR.
It’s got something way better: LieAr
We’ll fix that, the car will be driving fully autonomously 2018, promise!
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/7/24151497/tesla-lidar-luminar-elon-musk-sensor-autonomous
Tesla bought over $2 million worth of lidar sensors from Luminar this year
I personally don’t think it’s a matter of more sensory input. Whilst Lidar wouldn’t be a bad thing, autonomous cars are just a problem current technology can’t solve.
The vehicles with a higher automated driving rating than Tesla use a more diverse range of sensory inputs. While it may not make fully autonomous driving, it very clearly would have made Tesla closer to it based on the fact that cars that use things like lidar in addition to cameras surpassed Tesla’s rating many years ago.
I think there needs be car 2 car ( or even car 2 human f.e. in smartphones and wearables ) introduced before self driving cars is capable to exist. Of course until real AI is introduced. We’re nowhere near the human capable ai
Put glue on your accelerator.
Blare free bird.
It is. The machine learning algorithm has maxed out its parameters because Elon decided to get rid of redundancy. The machine learning algorithm had to invent new algorithms to do what redundancy would have easily done in far fewer lines of code. They are out of compute power BECAUSE they decided to cheap out and removed redundancy.
Have you seen Waymo?
We already have road legal level 4 self driving cars for sale in Germany (Mercedes EQS and S Class), level 5 isnt far away.
If Tesla didn’t go the vision-only route they would probably also have level 4 autonomy by now
It is to some degree. Lots of other new cars have lane keeping assist and automatic braking, BLIS, adaptive cruise control etc, and so on with more capable sensors and can for the most part drive without input from the driver better than the Tesla models with ultrasonic sensors or simply cameras. In fact the ones that rely solely on cameras absolutely do reportedly perform worse in testing. Musk was insistent that they could cheap out on the types of sensors used in order to make more profit and it shows. I don’t think it’s that tech cannot handle self driving currently. I think that it’s a numbers game where the firms attempting it want to do it as cheaply as possible while promising the moon and stars which they can’t deliver on a cheap budget. Vehicles like Ford’s (Blue Cruise) use all kinds of sensors including radar and GPS to allow for handsfree (not self driving) and it does work. The proofs of concept are out there in the world, but the costs to go from something like that to full self driving just doesn’t make it feasible for the average car manufacturer.
Lots of other new cars have lane keeping assist and automatic braking, BLIS, adaptive cruise control etc, and so on with more capable sensors and can for the most part drive without input from the driver better than the Tesla
Self driving is a huge step on from these things though. Hyper cruise control is easy in comparison and that’s what those features give.
Self driving means capable in all situations and all conditions. Not just highways.
First, let me clarify I bought my Tesla used, before Musk went full fascist, and autopilot came free. The car was updated to the newest hardware for free, since the original FSD equipment couldn’t do it either.
That out of the way, FSD sucks, and it’s getting worse, not better. When if first come out of beta it was okay. I remember describing it as driving with a teenager, they got the general idea, but would make bad decisions so you had to watch them. Years of updates later and it’s practically unusable to me. It tries to go way under or over the speed limit, it hesitates or slams on the brakes for green lights. It slams on the brakes for cars that pull out with plenty of gap but doesn’t even notice the risky merges. It can not seem to navigate intersections anymore, damn near stopping in the middle of a turn. It actually just updated yesterday and I tried it again, it took me less than 5 miles to disable it again. It is, in my opinion, a hazard to use. I talked to my partner about it and we both agree it didn’t used to be this bad.
Anyway, the stupidest part of all this, is they changed it so it’s either full self driving all the time or not. You want cruise while you’re in traffic because you know it’ll try to cut in front of someone? Silly idiot, no you don’t. So you now have to have a second profile* for cruise control and lane keep without FSD. And the odd thing is that lane keep and cruise are fine. They function like FSD used to. They can drive the highway with no problem and trust me, I do not have much faith in the car so I’m watching it close. It can’t navigate city streets, but neither can FSD…
TLDR, my car was a better deal for me than Tesla. After years of FSD access, it’s bad and getting worse, not better. I can’t believe people pay 5 figures for it and maybe that’s why they feel the need to clip perfect drives or defend it.
That out of the way, FSD sucks, and it’s getting worse, not better.
It’s almost like they bet on the AI to teach the AI, rather than continuing to pay for skilled engineers.
Buckle up folks, we’re going to see a lot more of this, across every industry, before the lawsuits go into high gear and anything gets better.
I don’t believe that you can use traditional algorithms to teach the car street driving, because there are to many different variations of intersections, traffic signs, special conditions like accidents, heavy Rain or fog, road closures or construction sites to get it right every time. Even if your autopilot is 99% correct and you drive 20000km a year, you still drive wrong 200km of it.
This doesn’t mean that AI will be better, because then you don’t even have a source code to track down where it went wrong to correct it in future updates.
I don’t believe that you can use traditional algorithms to teach the car street driving, because there are to many different variations… Even if your autopilot is 99% correct and you drive 20000km a year, you still drive wrong 200km of it.
Exactly!
And this is why, if the problem is solveable, it must be solved by learning models shepherded by expert engineers. The LLMs can take care of the long boring stretches, freeing skilled engineer time to fine-tune an LLM algorithm hybrid for the tricky bits.
I’m inclined to believe the problem is solveable, but since I’m not selling anything, I’m allowed to say “if”. Heh.
Since the first time I heard about FSD I’ve been wondering why Tesla (or others) doesn’t set up a system where drivers opt-in (no opt-in by default) to sending anonymized driving data to help train the model. The vast majority of the time, it’s probably modeling OK driving. At least no accidents. But the shitty driving and accidents are also useful as data about what to avoid.
Maybe they’re already doing this? But then I wonder why their FSD is getting shittier rather than improving. One would think with more driving data, good and bad examples, would only help.
I would be shocked to discover they’re not already doing this.
Not enough paid humans sorting between which data is examples of good behaviour and which data is examples of bad behaviour. Not saying that is what is happening as we don’t even know if there is data, but that would be the weakness in that plan when run the way it would be run if instituted by elon.
Good point.
Yeah. Current generation learning models can do impressive things in the hands of a skilled engineer, but Elon is leading a round of class warfare against skilled engineers right now.
Shareholders need to decide which they really want to bet on to win.
I’ve been wondering why Tesla (or others) doesn’t set up a system where drivers opt-in (no opt-in by default) to sending anonymized driving data to help train the model.
That’s exactly how they train the model, but every Tesla is opted in with, to my knowledge, no option to opt out.
That’s what they do except for the opt in part.
Sounds like it’d be nice if you had real control over the car’s software, and you could roll it back.
This… also makes me a little more weary driving around Teslas in traffic.
Some of us Tesla drivers refuse to use any of their bullshit auto-driving software (I don’t even use lane assist anymore) because of bad experiences so hopefully most of them are just driving normally. Which I do admit may not spark much confidence given how terrible some drivers are.
Fully agree. The sort of good news for driving around them is that most of my frustrations come from it being overly cautious and almost getting rear-ended because it decided to stop for a green light or some other odd decision. It’s rare to have it interact poorly with someone that is driving predictably. Like, cut it off without a signal and you have introduced something has not already accounted for. Driving alongside it on the highway, it sees you and knows where you are. But people are unpredictable and it only takes one mistake.
wary=cautious
weary=tired
The stress of being wary for long periods of time will make you weary.
Good way for people to remember the difference! Even my wife had this one mixed up for a while, and she’s very sensitive to confrontation. So I confronted her and she was angry for a bit but now she says it correctly.
I have a good friend who thinks teetotal means very drunk when it actually means no alcohol consumption whatsoever. I’ve brought it up to him a couple times and he reacts negatively. I haven’t heard him say it since the second time.
I don’t want to be a stick in the mud about these things, I just want people to improve their communication so they are respected and taken seriously.
If I see something like a there/their/they’re mistake I just stop reading the comment. Probably unfair of me but I just disregard the person’s opinion. And before anyone wants to tell me that not everyone speaks English as a first language, it’s actually native speakers who make that mistake. People who learned English later in life generally know the difference.
The 2 that bother me are lose/loose and rogue/rouge.
That out of the way, FSD sucks, and it’s getting worse, not better. When if first come out of beta it was okay. I remember describing it as driving with a teenager, they got the general idea, but would make bad decisions so you had to watch them. Years of updates later and it’s practically unusable to me. It tries to go way under or over the speed limit, it hesitates or slams on the brakes for green lights. It slams on the brakes for cars that pull out with plenty of gap but doesn’t even notice the risky merges. It can not seem to navigate intersections anymore, damn near stopping in the middle of a turn. It actually just updated yesterday and I tried it again, it took me less than 5 miles to disable it again. It is, in my opinion, a hazard to use. I talked to my partner about it and we both agree it didn’t used to be this bad.
Sounds like it still drives like a teenager!
Which of course is terrible since it should be improving over time.
It works well on freeways. I still don’t use it much on city streets except for the occasional shits and giggles. It has issues on non-divided highways and refuses to drive at my set speed limit.
I remember describing it as driving with a teenager, they got the general idea, but would make bad decisions so you had to watch them.
This is worse than just driving yourself. I either need to be engaged in actively driving, or it really needs to be able to handle the task by itself.
It’s why I find the lane-keeping feature in my vehicle to be useful, but lane-centering is just too weird for me to use.
I went to Texas for the eclipse. Made a big family vacation out of it…landed in Houston, rented a Mustang Mach-E, stayed there for a few days, drove to Austin for a few days, drove to Dallas for a few days (and for the eclipse, was at the Perot), then back to Houston for a few more days.
I say this because this was a lot of highway driving. More than I would usually do. And I absolutely loved one-pedal driving in the city, and the adaptive cruise control and lane keeping on the highway. I trusted it much, much more than in our 2019 Odyssey.
Anything more than that, I don’t think the tech is really ready for. I wish it were. I know theoretically a computer could be a much, much better driver than humans…but it takes a non-trivial amount of intelligence to drive. We take it for granted, because a lot of it is practically instinctual to us, and almost entirely subconscious. It’s an incredible amount of identification and complex decision making that goes into it if you actually break down the number of inputs you observe and variables you “know” the values of (such as stopping distance for various surface and weather conditions).
First, let me clarify I bought my Tesla used, before Musk went full fascist
Ditto for my Volkswagon
Mu dude, ad fellow tesla driver, I fully concur!
I guess he’s talking about other upgrades like radar sensors and all the stuff that people told him from the get go.
This article specifically mentioned only changes to the computer hardware, not the cameras.
My bad.
they changed it so it’s either full self driving all the time or not
No they didn’t…you can still activate regular adaptive cruise control without any of the FSD nonsense.
Yes, I said that…
So you now have to have a second profile* for cruise control and lane keep without FSD.
No you don’t need a second profile for that, you can just pull down once on the right stalk to enable regular adaptive CC with lane keep instead of twice for FSD. This second profile requirement is complete nonsense.
The “pull once for FSD” that removes the regular adaptive CC is a voluntary option in the settings, you can just disable that. If you have that enabled and don’t like it, that’s your fault not theirs.
You are not correct. There are several forum posts complaining about this issue. One of which is linked below.
You can disable it on your profile, but to switch back and forth you have to stop the car, place it in park, switch to FSD, accept the agreements, re-apply all your personal settings for traffic lights and such. At this point, the double or single pull activation greys out and you are stuck with single pull, all or nothing FSD. When the car screws up and you don’t want FSD anymore, you must again navigate to the autopilot menu and disable it.
Or, like me, you can do this once in a safe location, save a second profile for FSD and switch immediately with two clicks from memory.
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/fsd-12-5-4-no-longer-allows-double-click-to-start.334535/
Is there a reason you are so defensive?
I just find misinformation really annoying. Like, There’s loads of reasons to hate on Tesla and Elon Musk, there is no need to make up stuff that isn’t true, it just takes away from the actual lies and issues and drown out valid criticism.
He and Trump deserve each other.
I think his intense commitment to getting Trump elected makes more sense when you consider this article.
His enormous wealth is largely stored in the form of Tesla stock, and that stock has been valued based on the belief that it isn’t a car company, it’s a robotaxi service currently selling the hardware to finance the software development. The value – and his wealth – can persist indefinitely as long as investors continue to accept that premise, no matter how long delayed. But if something tangibly undermines that premise, Musk could conceivably lose the majority of his wealth overnight.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Agency is probably the greatest threat to his wealth. He doesn’t worry about competitors or protestors or Twitter users or advertisers. They’re all just petty nuisances. But the federal regulator over roads… that is his proverbial killer snail. And I think fully capturing the entire federal regulatory state is his strategy to permanently confine that snail.
More than anything else, I think that’s what is motivating his radical embrace of fascism.
Aren’t they all motivated by wealth and greed?
Well any political choice will increase the wealth of the billionaire class in general. Any candidate that is a threat to that will be smeared to dust before they get anywhere near power.
But Musk is going for the more direct approach, and tbh I think the second Trump gets power again he’ll have no need for Musk and will treat him like the parasite he is. He’s certainly done that before.
Sometimes I’m reminded that there’s always a chance that they go submarine diving or some such with another overconfident crony who thinks their skills got them where they are today.
I would like them to try to go to Mars this coming January. I am sure with enough fuel one of Elons rockets can get it moving in the right direction, they can wing everything else as they go.
I don’t think he would go submarine diving, it would be more in-character for him to try and fail a moon vacation.
Makes sense. I’m not picky about which exact risks our entitled overconfident billionaires opt to take.
Can’t wait for the supporters to come out and gas light buyers instead: "uh, well of course they couldn’t. He didn’t lie you just don’t understand tech…!
I work in IT and people that think like that can fuck themselves. “What do you mean Meta lied by selling your data to a company you didn’t know about. Maybe you should just have never trusted Meta.”
Stupid fucking boot lickers.
To be fair to Meta, they did tell you they might do that. They didn’t lie. They just told you in the find print of an already convoluted and arcane legal document that they know most people would never read, fewer would understand, and no one could do anything to change.
So unlike Tesla, where they did lie about FSD’s capabilities, and that is at best false advertising but probably actually fraud, Meta at least had a thin veneer of plausible deniability against accusations of being liars when they sold your data to unknown third-parties because they did tell you about it, you just needed a law degree to understand what they were telling you.
Olympic level mental gymnasts
Oh, so it turns out that “genius billionaires” only exist in comic books?
Nobody could have seen that one coming!
Translation: all the times Tesla has vowed that all of its vehicles would soon be capable of fully driving themselves may have been a convenient act of salesmanship that ultimately turned out not to be true."
There’s a word for that already. Lied. They/He lied.
No need for 30 words when 2 will do.
They Lied.
Maybe one extra world: They lied maliciously.
Also, they did so repeatedly, over a very long time and while it must have been fully apparent with insider knowledge that this setup cannot work.
He said it would exist by 2019 and you would be able to use your car as a taxi when not using it. Even made claims about how it will Delray costs. That’s all sorts of other extra business legal words like fraud.
salesmanship
You mean false advertisement
Worse than that. Fraud. He’s scammed people out of millions.
Or just fraud
It’s pure grift.
Right. Good salespeople listen to customers, not try to sell them something they a) don’t need or b) won’t work as advertised.
Nah a judge determined it was just " puffery " and obviously he didn’t really mean self driving
Let’s not split hairs lol
Never buy a product for a non existent feature that’s promised in update.
you just angered the entire AI/singularity community. Expect a sternly worded, AI-generated notice.
The letter is not here yet you liar
The letter is not here yet you liar
A sternly worded, AI-generated notice:
While it’s understandable to be cautious about buying a product based on promised updates, there are several reasons why it can still be a reasonable decision:
-
Trust in the Brand: Many companies have a track record of delivering on their promises. If a brand has a history of providing valuable updates and features, it may be worth trusting that they will continue to do so.
-
Current Value: Even if a product has promised future features, it often provides substantial value in its current state. Users can benefit from the existing features while looking forward to enhancements.
-
Community and Ecosystem: Some products thrive in a vibrant community where users share tips, tricks, and workarounds. The support of an active user base can enhance the product experience even before promised features are released.
-
Long-term Investment: In fast-paced technology markets, many products evolve over time. Buying early can sometimes give users a competitive edge or ensure they are part of the development process, influencing future updates.
-
Risk vs. Reward: While there’s a risk that promised features may not materialize, the potential reward—enhanced functionality, improved performance, or even a price drop due to demand—can make the investment worthwhile.
-
Feedback Opportunities: Early adopters often have a voice in the development of future updates. Engaging with a product before all features are released can allow users to provide valuable feedback that shapes the final product.
In conclusion, while it’s prudent to be wary of non-existent features, evaluating the overall value, the brand’s reputation, and potential benefits can justify the purchase.
-
Just like early-access games.
This smacks of the hyperloop, a false product offered to suppress support of other competing products.
Id est, a high-capital entity using their power to suppress competiton for smaller (more sincere) interests.
This 100%, too many musk fanboys don’t understand how much he is actually hindering innovation.
Even at SpaceX they make more progress when he isn’t involved.
This is the epitome of American “ingenuity” as it promises, promises, promises, and no-one ever actually delivers.
Just. Like. Trump.
Took my first drive as a passenger in a FSD Tesla the other day. I was rapidly underwhelmed. I mean, yeah…it’s pretty cool the car drives itself, to an extent. But even as a passenger I was struck by the number of times I would have taken the wheel and made the car do what it was supposed to. Hesitant pulling forward to turn, hesitant pulling out into traffic after a turn, wrong speed for the road, abrupt turns… Did it get us there? Sure. Did it do a good job? Mid at best. Probably better as an anti-fatigue measure on highway drives instead of taking you places in town. I would not pay for FSD were I to own a Tesla…at least it seems really inappropriate for the kind of driving I do.
so like the autopilot in Elite Dangerous. will it get you there? sure. will it get you there fast? …not exactly.
Will it get us there in one piece? Probably
Friendship drive charging
Better than the autopilot in eve…
It’s funny because what you describe is way BETTER than I would have expected. LOL.
It’s only killed a few people recently, so I assume it has to work pretty well at least 99% of the time. Though it’s really funny watching tech bros talk about how great it is and then seeing it blow a stop sign.
The best use cases I can think of for full self-driving are the elderly, the visually impaired, the drunk, the disabled, and the easily distracted.
Eh… If full self driving got to where it needs to be then it would be safer for everyone if all vehicles were full self driving.
The safest driver is a predictable driver. When vehicles are subject to algorithms and are programmed to obey the laws of the road, and have open constant communication of their intentions with other vehicles, you can’t get any more predictable than that.
I say this as someone who drives for a living, too. I don’t think it’s happening any time soon, but full autonomous would be way safer than people.
I believe that some technological ideas can work. The problem is that ideas that are under people like Musk, are doomed to always fail and will be seen as negative.
Elon Musk sucks.
As ever, things that succeed with Musk as the figurehead succeed despite him not because of him.
People also shouldn’t sell things to end users before they’ve invented them
The problem is that ideas that are under people like musk, are doomed to always fail
Like electric cars, like reusable rockets…
Yep Elon famously invented the first electric car and the first reusable spacecraft. He did it in his garage with his own two hands!
Read your damn history.
SpaceX is basically 100% Elon’s creation. He was founder, Tom Mueller (who designed the Merlin rocket engine) was the first employee period
Tesla was Elon and a few other people who had seen a good electric roadster, but it had been a one-off that that company was not going to produce. They decided they wanted to produce an electric roadster, so they did. Initially, Martin Eberhard was in charge of the company and Elon was just an investor. Search archive.org for the original Tesla blog. It’s all laid out. I know this because I was following them while it was happening.
Eberhard was in charge, and they were going for a setup with a two-speed gearbox. There was to be no clutch, just a synchromesh to allow shifting. Problem is, shifting at 10,000+ RPM under heavy load is mechanically stressful, and they were having a lot of trouble getting the gearbox to work reliably. After a good year of screwing with this, they were burning through cash and not getting close to actually shipping a car. That’s when Elon stepped in, pushed Eberhard out, and took over Tesla. Elon quickly switched to a setup with a single speed non-shifting gearbox (much easier to build, much less expensive, and will basically last forever as long as you lubricate it) and a larger and better cooled electric motor to deliver the required torque that they wouldn’t get from a lower speed gear. That setup is still in use today in all Teslas.
Wow. What a visionary 🙄
I’m not saying he’s not an asshole. But he is a visionary.
And right now, if he wasn’t up Trump’s ass, you’d probably be saying he’s a visionary without sarcasm.
He wasn’t up Trump’s ass like a month ago. That’s a fairly recent development.
Okay Trump is recent, but his whole change of focus since buying Twitter is where public opinion on him shifted. That started a shift in public statement more toward the libertarian or perhaps conservative and that made him unpopular with a lot of the liberals who previously liked him for pushing environmental causes.
Now that he pushes conservative and libertarian ideals, supports a Republican candidate, he becomes persona non grata. That may well be valid, but it should not take away recognition of his other accomplishments. If he’s now an asshole, he can be a visionary asshole. Becoming an asshole doesn’t mean he isn’t or wasn’t a visionary.
This was the inevitable result even years ago. When self-driving cars were the hot topic and several companies were doing their own thing, that’s when it should have been obvious it was never going to happen. It’s not a problem any one independent company was ever going to solve, especially quickly. For to work it would have to be an open source, global standard with several companies working together.
I mean you’d have to build out a massive amount of infrastructure to further support it. All vehicles would have to have a module in it that would communicate with everything else around it, regardless if it was self-driving or not. There can’t be a premium model, or a subscription, ect., it would need to just be there and work.
The overall task to get this done was never going to be quick, easy, or cheap. This was always going to be bigger than any one single company and a handful of engineers. It’s going to take the effort of many companies and governments all working selflessly.
Lying liar lied. News at 11.
My Leaf can handle itself on the highway and it’s the perfect amount of self driving that I want. I also didn’t need to pay half the price of the leaf for the privilege.
