Tesla

[FoMoJo]

Ford forgot to copy the important bit: hanging the cable on the underside of the hole in the middle.

Rather an odd variation of the Blue Oval.

[AutobahnSHO]

hahahaha

[Morris Minor]

This is the guy who reviewed the Ioniq 5.
He did not mention that Model Ys sold in Europe are made in Shanghai. These are reputedly much better screwed together than those made in Fremont CA.
European market Ys will eventually come from the factory outside Berlin.

https://youtu.be/1fmd7KMmIGY

[Galaxy]

He did not mention that Model Ys sold in Europe are made in Shanghai. These are reputedly much better screwed together than those made in Fremont CA.

The fit and and finish is supposed to be better on the Chinese Teslas, but the Chinese battery is supposedly meh.

[Morris Minor]

Absolutely buh..rutal hit piece in the NYT. Nothing like getting whacked...carnage left the gutter as a Suburban accelerates away into the cold night.  Funeral flowers sent from Michigan ZIP codes.
I expect Mike will enjoy this. 

Inside Tesla as Elon Musk Pushed an Unflinching Vision for Self-Driving Cars
The automaker may have undermined safety in designing its Autopilot driver-assistance system to fit its chief executive's vision, former employees say.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/technology/tesla-autopilot-elon-musk.html

[r0tor]

That story...  Wow, amazing that some employees disagree with the approach of their company and management!

I've lost all interest in the drama around "autopilot" and "FSD".  The cars are still sold with a steering wheel and pedals for a reason.  The whole outrage over the interpretation of what these name implies is just nonsense.  I have had "stability control" on cars for decades that still will spin out in the right road conditions.  That's why there ultimately is still a driver with controls - nothing different about Tesla.

Similarly the "real world tests" of FSD are just worthless.  So some tester tries the system in maybe the worst 0.1% of roads in the US - which human drivers even have a hard time with.  Why not show what the system is capable of not capable of doing on basic highways, rural roads, and small towns which make up the 99% of roads.  After all, the cars are still sold with human controls and a human behind those controls for edge cases like the middle of downtown San Fran..

Whatever, as long as their stock price is up the theatre will continue

[Morris Minor]

Calling Full Self Driving was a PR mistake, all the heavy artillery swung round & targeted Tesla when they did that. Co-Pilot or something would have been better.
But as for the NYT saying there was no explanation of going to vision-only... how many more hours of in-the-weeds lectures & presentations do they need? All part of being a bit slow on the uptake I suppose

[Laconian]

Calling Full Self Driving was a PR mistake, all the heavy artillery swung round & targeted Tesla when they did that. Co-Pilot or something would have been better.
But as for the NYT saying there was no explanation of going to vision-only... how many more hours of in-the-weeds lectures & presentations do they need? All part of being a bit slow on the uptake I suppose

What are the reasons for vision-only, other than it being cheaper, and "Elon says so"?

[afty]

What are the reasons for vision-only, other than it being cheaper, and "Elon says so"?

"Humans can drive with only two eyes."  Also apparently sensor fusion is hard.

[Laconian]

So he wants to emulate human limitations, after years of beating the "humans are terrible at driving" drum... hmm...

[Laconian]

I know from experience that going beyond cameras is important. Our sailboat has a broadband radar system and it is a godsend when the weather turns to shit. You absolutely get superhuman powers of perception when the rain kicks up or the fog rolls in. Frankly, it strikes me as simply idiotic to preemptively shelve revolutionary advances in sensing because... handwave handwave

[MrH]

What are the reasons for vision-only, other than it being cheaper, and "Elon says so"?

There isn't an argument for vision-only.  This is a matter of, they couldn't get radar anymore because of supply chain issues, and can't afford LiDAR, so the solution was to pitch this as a software problem so they could continue to make cars.

[r0tor]

What are the reasons for vision-only, other than it being cheaper, and "Elon says so"?

There is the classis controls question - if you are looking at more than 1 watch, what time is it?

[Soup DeVille]

There is the classis controls question - if you are looking at more than 1 watch, what time is it?

That's why you need 3.

[GoCougs]

"Humans can drive with only two eyes."  Also apparently sensor fusion is hard.

"Hard" is relative IMO/IME. It's done all the time in industry.

What's hard are the exceptions and edge cases. Humans are as-yet unparalleled in the ability to perceive, process and act on the never-before-seen. IME (industry) I can't imagine how this will ever be replicated, and 10+ years of work that is vastly higher quality (@ Waymo, and even then it's still eons away from legit) tells me that I'm probably about right.

Plus, I'm a firm believer that self-driving is a solution no one was really asking for.

[MrH]

From a guy I follow on Twitter:

At the end of the day they are using a Low Rez 1280 x 960 video camera with no radar.  Most people insist on 3,840 x 2,160 (4K) when watching Netflix yet they are trusting their lives to this nanny cam.

  Yes, we drive with only two eyes.  But to compare these cheap cameras to our eyes is so silly.  And to compare the AI to our brain is even more ridiculous.

[r0tor]

From a guy I follow on Twitter:

  Yes, we drive with only two eyes.  But to compare these cheap cameras to our eyes is so silly.  And to compare the AI to our brain is even more ridiculous.

Because object detection needs resolution to count strand of hair on a person walking...

[Laconian]

Because object detection needs resolution to count strand of hair on a person walking...

Extra resolution helps a lot in poor lighting, when you have to recover an image from the murk of sensor noise.

[NomisR]

Extra resolution helps a lot in poor lighting, when you have to recover an image from the murk of sensor noise.

probably would help revolve phantom braking as a result of poor resolution.  It seems like it's an issue with the cars even with the radar system.  I'm assuming lidar would probably help more?

[Laconian]

probably would help revolve phantom braking as a result of poor resolution.  It seems like it's an issue with the cars even with the radar system.  I'm assuming lidar would probably help more?

Perhaps when it's clear out, but I believe lidar is badly attenuated by rain, fog, particulates, etc.

[MrH]

This video is still on their website.

https://www.tesla.com/videos/full-self-driving-hardware-all-tesla-cars

It starts with:

The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons.

He is not doing anything.  The car is driving itself.

Now read this report: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/technology/tesla-autopilot-elon-musk.html

As Tesla approached the introduction of Autopilot 2.0, most of the Autopilot team dropped their normal duties to work on a video meant to show just how autonomous the system could be. But the final video did not provide a full picture of how the car operated during the filming.

The route taken by the car had been charted ahead of time by software that created a three-dimensional digital map, a feature unavailable to drivers using the commercial version of Autopilot, according to two former members of the Autopilot team. At one point during the filming of the video, the car hit a roadside barrier on Tesla property while using Autopilot and had to be repaired, three people who worked on the video said.

The video was later used to promote Autopilot's capabilities, and it is still on Tesla's website.

When Mr. Musk unveiled Autopilot 2.0 in October 2016, he said at the news conference that all new Tesla cars now included the cameras, computing power and all other hardware they would need for "full self driving" — not a technical term, but one that suggested truly autonomous operation.

His statements took the engineering team by surprise, and some felt that Mr. Musk was promising something that was not possible, according to two people who worked on the project.

Sterling Anderson, who led the project at the time and later started an autonomous driving company called Aurora, told Tesla's sales and marketing teams that they should not refer to the company's technology as "autonomous" or "self-driving" because this would mislead the public, according to two former employees.

Some in the company may have heeded the advice, but Tesla was soon using the term "full self driving" as a standard way of describing its technology.

This is straight up fraud.  This is infinitely worse than Nikola rolling a non-working truck down a hill.  That was also fraud, but this type of lying is actually killing people.  I have no faith in our regulatory system if they won't do even the most basic policing of this kind of thing.

[NomisR]

Perhaps when it's clear out, but I believe lidar is badly attenuated by rain, fog, particulates, etc.

It's the same with the current camera based system. Hell, just passing a car at night would take the car out of auto steer because the headlights would blind the camera not to mention rain, dust and other debris.  I guess the best combination would be all 3

[SJ_GTI]

Tesla's FSD promotion definitely "feels" like its  Theranos level scam. I don't hate their cars, but just by branding something "full self driving" when it clearly isn't full self driving seems like a scam. If nothing else, you would think the FTC or some other agency would at least stop Tesla from using such a misleading name.

[NomisR]

Tesla's FSD promotion definitely "feels" like its  Theranos level scam. I don't hate their cars, but just by branding something "full self driving" when it clearly isn't full self driving seems like a scam. If nothing else, you would think the FTC or some other agency would at least stop Tesla from using such a misleading name.

Yeah, my biggest issues with the cars is the autopilot and FSD.  The actual car itself.. well actually there's still plenty of issues such as the control arm issues, and there's the bushing issues, basically all due  to the fact that the car puts out way too much torque and weights too much which puts a lot of stress on the under engineered parts.  Which is why I swapped out all of it.

[SJ_GTI]

I feel like RAM should release a diesel truck and call it the "FULLY ELECTRIC RAM." And when people ask why a "fully electric" RAM still has an ICE engine, just point out all the many features in the car that use electricty (like the windows, seats adjustments, radio, etc...).

[Laconian]

It's the same with the current camera based system. Hell, just passing a car at night would take the car out of auto steer because the headlights would blind the camera not to mention rain, dust and other debris.  I guess the best combination would be all 3

Yeah. No amount of added processing will compensate if your perceptions are defeated by environmental conditions. If the car relied on dead reckoning of obstacles if its CCD is blown out... how is that better than humans already do today?

[MrH]

Tesla's FSD promotion definitely "feels" like its  Theranos level scam. I don't hate their cars, but just by branding something "full self driving" when it clearly isn't full self driving seems like a scam. If nothing else, you would think the FTC or some other agency would at least stop Tesla from using such a misleading name.

It doesn't "feel" like fraud.  It straight up is.  This is objective, not subjective.

[CaminoRacer]

Do any of the autonomous car companies take advantage of aerospace autopilot designs, tech, engineers, etc? Or are they all going at it alone?

[afty]

I know Waymo hires a lot of roboticicists. Also general software engineers.

[MrH]

The safety and design approach is similar in some regards.  Autopilot on a plane is more analogous to standard old cruise control than autonomous vehicles.