From https://www.tesla.com/autopilot: "All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver"
Why do we keep referring to something that we understand should require human supervision as "auto"? Stop the marketing buzzfeed and let's be real.
I'm not sure whether it's intentionally been worded that way, but that sentence makes only a statement about hardware, not software. So technically, it's correct that the hardware is more capable than that of a human ("sees" and "hears" more), but it's the software that's not up to par.
That's like "Made with 100% local organic chicken" is only pointing out that the organic chicken is local, unlike the non-organic chicken whose provenance is not guaranteed.
That would be great to live in the world of marketing people where everyone is so able to parse weasel words. That would solve the fake news problem overnight.
People still use waterproof and water resistant interchangeably. People don't get the difference. Same with HW/SW, they won't know the difference. They read this web page and they think they are buying a self driving car.
And if the coma was remote software upgrade induced? Stretching the analogy a bit, but a lot of people hype Tesla’s remote updates without considering how many remote updates tend to brick our devices.
That sentence is just saying that the _hardware_ (not the software) is sufficient for "full self-driving capability". The current _software_ doesn't support that.
The point being that in the future the car _could_ get "full self-driving capability" via a software update. In contrast, a car that doesn't have the necessary hardware will never be fully self-driving even if we do develop the necessary software to accomplish that in the future.
And yet that is quasi criminal (from an ethical pov) that they have worded it that way for 2 reasons:
a. When you buy a car why should you even care about that hw/sw distinction, and more importantly do you have the distinction in mind at all time, and are advertisement usually worded that way, stating that maybe the car could become self-driving one day (but without even stating the maybe explicitly, just using tricks)
b. It is extremely dubious that the car even have the necessary hardware to become a fully autonomous driving car. We will see, but I don't believe it much, and more importantly competitors and people familiar with the field also don't believe it much...
People clearly are misunderstanding what Tesla Autopilot is, but this is not, ultimately, their fault. This is Tesla's fault. The people operating the car can NOT be considered as perfect flawless robot. Yet Tesla's model consider them like that, and reject all responsibility, not even considering the responsibility that they made a terrible mistake in considering them like that. We need to act the same way as when similar cases happens for a pilot mistake in an Airplane: change the system so that the human will make less mistakes (especially if the human is required for safe operation, which is the case here). But Tesla is doing the complete opposite! By misleading buyers and drivers in the first place.
Tesla should be forced by the regulators to stop their shit: stop misleading and dangerous advertisement; stop their autosteer uncontrolled experiment.
A.) Pretty sure that statement was made to assuage fears that people would be purchasing an expensive asset that rapidly depreciates in value, only to witness it becoming obsolete in a matter of years because its hardware doesn't meet the requirements necessary for full self-driving functionality. Companies like Tesla tout over-the-air patching as a bonus to their product offering. Such a thing is useless if the hardware can't support the new software.
I think I actually sort of disagree with your reasoning in precisely the opposite direction. Specifically, you state the following: "The people operating the car can NOT be considered as perfect flawless robot.".
I agree with that statement 100%. People are not perfect robots with perfect driving skills. Far from it. Automotive accidents are a major cause of death in the United States.
What I disagree with is your takeaway. Your takeaway is that Tesla knows that people aren't perfect drivers, so it is irresponsible to sell people a a device with a feature (autopilot) that people will use incorrectly. Well, if that isn't the definition of a car, I don't know what is. Cars in and of themselves are dangerous and it takes perhaps 5 minutes of city driving to see someone doing something irresponsible with their vehicle. This is why driving and the automotive industry is so heavily (and rightly) regulated.
The knowledge that people are not save drivers, to me, is a strong argument in favor of autopilot and similar features. I suspect, as many people do, that autopilot doesn't compare favorably to a professional driver who is actively engaged in the activity of driving. But this isn't how people drive. To me, the best argument in favor of autopilot is - and I realize this sounds sort of bad - that as imperfect as it may be, its use need only result in fewer accidents, injuries, and deaths, than the human drivers who are otherwise driving unassisted.
Wow! I'm glad you pointed that out. It was subtle enough I didn't catch it. But perhaps we should consider this type of wording a fallacy, because with that level of weasel-wording, almost anything is possible! The catch is that it presupposes a non-existent piece of information, the software. And we don't know if that software will ever - or can ever - exist.
Misleading examples of the genre:
My cell phone has the right hardware to cure cancer! I just don't have the right app.
The dumbest student in my class has a good enough brain to verify the Higgs-Boson particle. He just doesn't know how.
This mill and pile of steel can make the safest bridge in the world. It just hasn't been designed yet.
Your shopping cart full of food could be used to make a healthy, delicious meal. All you need is a recipe that no one knows.
Baby, I can satisfy your needs up and down as well as any other person. I just have to... well... learn how to satisfy your needs!
All depends on how likely you think it is that self-driving car tech will become good enough for consumer use within the next several years.
If we were well on the way to completing a cure for cancer that uses a certain type of cell phone hardware, maybe that first statement wouldn't sound so ridiculous.
Yes, but of course the only thing that matters is whether or not the car can do it. That it requires hardware and software is important to techies but a non-issue to regular drivers. They buy cars, not 'hardware and software'.
And if by some chance it turns out that more hardware was required after all they'll try to shoehorn the functionality into the available package. If only to save some $ but also not to look bad from a PR point of view. That that compromises safety is a given, you can't know today what exactly it will take to produce this feature until you've done so and there is a fair chance that it will in fact require more sensors, a faster CPU, more memory or a special purpose co-processor.
I agree that since that statement is at the top of the /autopilot page may insinuate that that's what Autopilot is, but that statement is describing the hardware on the cars rather than the software. I think that's intended to be read as "if you buy a new Tesla, you'll be able to add the Full Self-Driving Capability with a future software update; no hardware updates required." It could be made more clear, though.
People will differ about whether the statement is worded clearly enough, but it is a bizarre thing to put on the very top of the page. It is completely aspirational, and there is no factual basis for it either. No company has yet achieved full self-driving capability, so how can Tesla claim their current vehicles have all the hardware necessary? Even if it's true that future software updates will eventually get good enough, what if the computational hardware isn't adequate for running that software (e.g. older iPhones becoming increasingly untenable to use with each iOS update).
The autopilot page needs to start with a description of what autopilot is, and then farther down the page, the point about not having to buy new hardware for "full" self driving could be made. This probably still needs a disclaimer that that is the belief of the company, not a proven concept.
But that's not going to happen, because Tesla wants to deceive some people into believing that autopilot is "full self driving" so they will buy the car.
That's what Tesla says but that's not how people are using it - and as people grow more comfortable with the autopilot, the less vigilant they'll become. I have this picture in my head where people are trying to recoup their commute time as though they're using public transport. I suspect we'll get there some day but today is not that day.
While the Tesla spokespeople are good at saying it's driver assist, their marketing people haven't heard - https://www.tesla.com/autopilot/. That page states "All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver." but as I noted above, we don't know how much of that safety should be attributed to the human. Tesla apparently knows when the driver's hands are on the steering wheel and I presume they can also tell when the car brakes, so they may have the data to separate those statistics. At a minimum, their engineers should be looking at every case where the autopilot is engaged but the human intervenes. They should probably also slam on the brakes (okay ... more gently) if the driver is alerted to take over but doesn't.
As an aside, just the name "Autopilot" implies autonomy.
"All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver."
This is perhaps a case of purposely confusing marketing. All vehicles have the hardware for full self-driving capability but not yet the software. The full self-driving is to be enabled later on through an over-the-air software update.
They can't even honestly claim they've got the hardware, when a "full safe driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver" is at this stage something in the realms of hypothesis, and the software which gets closest to doing so relies on far more hardware than a Tesla to achieve this.
It's not merely purposely confusing. It's at best, not an outright lie only because they hope it's true.
It's amazing how many "basics" Tesla is missing with the statement that their cars have all the tech to be fully self driving. I have an Infiniti QX80 with the surround camera system, lane stay, and collision warning system. Unlike Tesla, they've not gone as far as to implement an autopilot feature and from what I can tell, for good reason. In the less than a year I've owned it, the side warning collision sensor / camera combination have falsely identified phantom threats due to road dust and debris and entirely missed real threats. The sensors simply don't have a self cleaning mechanism like our eyes which is one fairly obvious problem that's lead to a few issues with my QX80. In looking through Tesla's marketing white papers and what-not I see no mention of how they keep their sensor system clean. It seems like that should be a pretty basic concern.
I'm not even sure it's fair to describe it as purposefully confusing. If I'm in the market for a Tesla I want to make sure the expensive car I'm buying will be getting all the updates I'm excited about. Otherwise I might hold off buying for a few years.
Even HN readers are misinterpreting it, and there is nothing to prevent confusion from Tesla side on these marketing pages.
The question of purposefulness is mostly irrelevant. It is their responsibility to avoid ambiguity in this domain because this could be dangerous. They are not doing it => they are putting people in danger. Now a posteriori if somebody manages to sue Tesla after a death a bad injury, maybe the purposefulness will be studied (but it will be hard to decide), but a priori it does not matter much as for the consequences of their in any case mislead attempts (even if it was only for an advertising harmless reason in the mind of the people who wrote it like that in the first place).
To finish, that they are carefully choosing their words to be technically true over and over, yet understood in an other way by most of the people, is at least distasteful. That they are doing it over and over through all existing channel makes it more and more probable that this is even on purpose, of course there is no proof but when we reach a certain point, we can be sufficiently convinced without a formal proof (hell even math proofs are rarely checked formally...)
The statistics also includes all the cases where drivers are not paying attention as they should, and it's still safer than the average car (at least according to Tesla).
> it's still safer than the average car (at least according to Tesla).
This is Tesla's big lie.
In all their marketing, Tesla is comparing crash rates of their passenger cars to ALL vehicles, including trucks and motorcycles, which have higher fatality rates. Motorcycles are about 10x-50x more dangerous than cars.
Not only that, they aren't controlling for variances in driver demographics - younger and old people have higher accident rates than middle-aged Tesla drivers - as well as environmental factors - rural roads have higher fatalities than highways. Never-mind the obvious "accidents in cars with Autopilot" vs "accidents in cars with Autopilot on".
If you do a proper comparison, Tesla's Autopilot is probably 100x more fatal than other cars. It's a god-dammed death trap.
This is not a problem that will be solved without fundamental infrastructure changes in the roads themselves. Anyone that believes in self-driving cars should never be employed, since they don't know what they're talking about.
I agree that the comparison with all motor vehicle deaths is misleading, and that we ought to be looking at accident rates for Tesla cars with Autopilot on versus off. That Tesla hasn't answered the latter despite having the data to do so is concerning.
However, I don't see the evidence for the claim that "Tesla's Autopilot is probably 100x more fatal than other cars". The flip side of the complaint that Tesla hasn't released information to know how safe Autopilot really is, is that we don't know how unsafe it really is either. If this is merely to say "I think Autopilot is likely very unsafe" then just say so, rather than giving a faux numerical value.
As for the claim that self-driving cars can't work without "fundamental infrastructure changes" and everybody working on self-driving cars should be fired, I think you're talking way beyond your domain of expertise.
You're complaining about one side using wildly misleading and baseless stats, but then turn around and throw out a completely baseless and fairly absurd claim with no attempt to even back or source it, and then claim that because some cars have 0 fatalities that means something.
The truth is somewhere in between Tesla's marketing and your wildly absurd 100x more fatal claim, but its much closer to Tesla than you.
Tesla's statistics (i.e. real numbers, but context means everything) do involve a whole whack of unrelated comparisons (buses, 18-wheelers, motorcycles) that all server to skew the stats in various ways, we can ignore them claiming to be slightly safer than regular cars.
However comparing more like to like, IIHS numbers for passenger cars driver deaths on highways puts Tesla at 3.2x more likely than all other cars to be involved in a fatal crash (1 death/428,000,000 miles driven vs tesla's 1 death/133,000,000 miles driven).
Of course this too is an unfair comparison. A 133hp econobox/prius vs a sports car in terms of performance is considered equal in that comparison. If one was really interested in accuracy, a comparison of high power AWD cars in similar price ranges driven on the same roads by the same demographics would be needed.
So by even standards clearly biased against Tesla, they are no where near 100x more fatal than other cars. Tesla's own numbers claim autopilot reduces accidents, and supposedly NHS numbers back them up.
Its important and critical to not believe marketing hype and lazy statistics. If you want people to take you seriously, countering hype and bad stats with equal or worse hype and worse counter stats is not the way to do it.
What is the catchment range for new (inexperienced) drivers? 18-25? There are a lot of people who have been driving for a long time who are not good at driving at all and lack all kind of self awareness. For example, following the car in front too close.
I would also think that the average Tesla owner is less likely to experience constant stress, long commute hours, tiredness and possible mental health issues that can contribute to car accidents.
Drivers not paying attention in non-autopilot vehicles is an increasing problem with the prevalence of smart phones. In places where it's illegal to text and drive I don't think you're going to get out of a ticket by telling the police officer "it's okay because Tesla was driving".
I do believe "it's still safer than the average car" because there's not a big tank of explosive - I'm most curious to hear what caused such a massive fire in this crash. But you're talking about the autopilot and it's statistically incorrect to say it's safer than the average car. It's merely safer than a driver alone - this should be no surprise as you'll find that cars with backup cameras and alarms don't hit have as many accidents while in reverse as cars without them.
I do believe "it's still safer than the average car" because there's not a big tank of explosive - I'm most curious to hear what caused such a massive fire in this crash.
How does a Tesla get such good range? There's still a lot of energy in those batteries, and damaging them is far easier to cause a fire than leaking fuel --- the former can self-ignite just from dissipating its own energy into an internal short, while the latter needs an ignition source. In addition, the batteries are under the entire vehicle and thus more likely to be damaged; a fuel tank has a smaller area and is concentrated in one place.
It is extremely rare for fuel tanks to explode in a crash.
I see how that is intuitively true, but it isn't really true in practice. Post crash fires with ICE are unusual, but not extremely rare. Similarly, post-repair car fires (leaky fuel lines) are not as unusual as most people think.
So far, experiential evidence with Tesla seems to be showing a lower than average risk of fires, though the breadth and nature of the battery leads to challenges in managing the fire itself.
All cases that I'm aware of proceeded at a slow enough pace to allow evacuation of the vehicle.
It is the opposite, LiIon/LiPo batteries are inherently dangerous and can cause chemical fire for various reasons (overcharging, undercharging, puncture, high temperature, etc.). These things are monitored/controlled in any modern application in normal usage, but in a crash you have to remember that you are literally few inches away from a massive stored up potential chemical energy. The fire burns very hot, the smoke is toxic and assuming somebody gets to you in time, it can only be extinguished reliably using special dry powder fire extinguishers (Class D)...
That's true but is against any good sense: cars don't allow you to play a video while driving, and allow you to have the false sense of security that somebody else is driving while instead you have to pay constant attention?
This morning I saw a minivan drifting all over the road. As we passed him, my passenger noticed that he had CNN playing on a phone attached by suction cup to the middle of the windshield.
It’s not a self-driving car. It’s really an advanced cruise control.