Tesla Whistleblower Says ‘Autopilot’ System Is Not Safe Enough To Be Used On Public Roads::“It affects all of us because we are essentially experiments in public roads.”
I lost all trust in their ‘Autopilot’ the day I read Musk said (Paraphrasing) “All we need are cameras, there’s no need for secondary/tertiary LIDAR or other expensive setups”
Like TFYM? No backups?? Or backups to the backups?? On a life fucking critical system?!
The crazier and stupier shit was that part of his justification was that “people drive and they only have eyes. We should be able to do the same.”
Its a stunningly idiotic justification, and yet here we are with millions of these “eyes only” teslas on the road.
or other expensive setups
As much as I lost trust in his bullshittery a long time ago, his need to mention the cost of critical safety systems is what stuck out to me the most here. That’s how you know the priorities are backwards.
Also, my robot vacuum has LiDAR. It’s not expensive relative to a car.
Hell every iphone has lidar and the pro models have two lidar cameras. The tech is not very expensive, epecially not for a $80,000 car.
My partner’s econobox has lidar for its cruise control, but Tesla can’t seem to figure out how to make it work.
Hell every iphone has lidar and the pro models have two lidar cameras. The tech is not very expensive, epecially not for a $80,000 car.
Around the time Elon made the claim Lidar for automotive purposes was quite expensive. That additional cost would make the self driving product a lot less desirable. Up selling cruise control into “self driving” earned them a lot of money.
Funnily enough all other aspects where Tesla has taken the expensive option the
cultretail investors would claim it was brilliant decisions because economy of scale would kick in and make it cheaper in the long run.Lidar was obviously exempt from any such scale and future tech improvements, because reasons.
My partner’s econobox has lidar for its cruise control, but Tesla can’t seem to figure out how to make it work.
It could be very expensive for Tesla to start using Lidar, because they’ve sold a lot of cars with the promise that they have the hardware for self driving. Retrofitting a million cars would not only cost a lot in terms of gear and work, but it would put additional stress on an already poor service network.
They have painted themselves into a corner. All because leadership thought self driving was a more or less solved problem almost a decade ago.
Rebrand to Ludicrous Self Drive and add back LIDAR.
Good point. I thought Teslas had radar for awhile though and they took it out?
Was lidar that expensive in a car though? Because Infiniti started adding it in 2014 for the cruise control and those cars usually sell new for $50k if you get it fully loaded.
And they could have added radar and sonar to assist the cameras at least. The radar couldn’t give 3d data, but it could say “yo bro that’s a solid object, not the skyline” at least.
Good point on the promises though. They really fucked themselves with Elon’s claims.
I thought Teslas had radar for awhile though and they took it out?
They decided radar was superfluous at one point during the pandemic. By sheer coincidence by the time supply chains were getting fucked. Hitting delivery targets were more important than safety.
And they could have added radar and sonar to assist the cameras at least. The radar couldn’t give 3d data, but it could say “yo bro that’s a solid object, not the skyline” at least.
They did do that. It can be pretty difficult to make sense of conflicting data like that. Tesla may have decided to not bother to solve such issues and hope less sensor data makes it easier to interpret.
This is what Elon had to say about Tesla’s sophisticated radar data interpretation capabilities in 2016:
In fact, an additional level of sophistication – we are confident that we can use the radar to look beyond the car in front of you by bouncing the radar signal off the road and around the car. We are able to process that echo by using the unique signature of each radar pulse as well as the time of flight of the photon to determine that what we are seeing is in fact an echo in front of the car that’s in front of you. So even if there’s something that was obscured directly both in vision and radar, we can use the bounce effect of the radar to look in front of that car and still brake.
It takes things to another level of safety.
I guess the ability to see around cars in front of you got lost in some software update along the line. Otherwise removing radar necessarily meant reducing the safety of the system, or Elon lied in 2016.
Was lidar that expensive in a car though? Because Infiniti started adding it in 2014 for the cruise control and those cars usually sell new for $50k if you get it fully loaded.
It depends on what you want to do with the sensors. Somewhat accurately mapping what’s immediately in front of the car to slightly improve speed matching and false positive/negative rates for emergency breaking comes at a cheaper price than the capability to fully map the surroundings fast and accurately enough for a computer to make correct decisions.
It’s actually gotten cheaper since they figured out how to make it solid state.
To be fair, humans have proven all you need are visual receptors to navigate properly.
To be fair, current computers / AI / whatever marketing name you call them aren’t as good as human brains.
No, but they can be improved to the point where all that’s necessary are cameras and the means to control the vehicle.
I take it you are an expert in the field to be saying this?
The experts agree.
No, they don’t and that’s the entire point in all of this. Tesla autopilot sucks and it will suck and kill people. But fanboys like you would rather “look to the future” instead of realistically looking at it.
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And how many vehicle accidents and deaths are there today? Proven that humans suck at driving maybe
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No we don’t, we use sight, sound and touch/feeling to drive at a minimum
Touch? Sure, barely. But you can drive without being able to hear.
I’d also wager you can get a license if you have that rare disease that prevents you from feeling. Since, you know, how little we use touch and hearing to drive.
But hey? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you can provide a source that says you can’t get licensed if you have that disease or if you’re deaf. That would prove your point. Otherwise, it proves mine.
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What brand of car has better autopilot with other sensors?
Uhhhh…
…any level 4 car actually, according to the federal governments and all the agencies who regulate this stuff.
NAVYA, Volvo/Audi, Mercedes, magna, baidu, Waymo.
Tesla isn’t even trying to go past level 3 at this point.
Why the fuck did I get down voted for looking for an ev Tesla alternative… This place makes no sense. Are you all Tesla fan boys or what?
It sounded like sarcasm rather than an honest question. Like “Find me a better autopilot” rather than “What manufacturer would you recommend for autopilot?”
It… sounded?? How does my question not appear genuine? I literally just asked a question. I want to buy an EV with excellent software in the next few years. That’s it. No sarcasm. Would prefer not a Tesla.
I took it as condescending, just poorly written. Also lots of Tesla fanboys on here. Glad your not
So condescending to ask for a better technology option with multiple sensors. /s
A 2014 Infiniti can drive itself more safely on the highway than a Tesla. The key here is they didn’t lie about the cars capabilities so they didn’t encourage complacency.
In the city though, yeah you’ll need to look at other level 4 cars.
What brand of car has better autopilot with other sensors?
All of them. The other automakers didn’t fire their engineers during a hissy fit.
No shit
Isn’t this already an established fact?
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Well they got rid of their relations department because Elon’s twitter is all you need
I don’t get it…
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Gee thanks for reporting on the obvious, Jalponik.
We knew this. And even this whistleblower report is old.
What a garbage news outlet.
Unfortunately this is one of those things that you can’t significantly develop/test on closed private streets. They need the scale, and the public traffic, and the idiots in the drunkards and the kids speeding. The only thing that’s going to stop them from working on autopilot will be that it’s no longer financially reasonable to keep going. Even a couple handfuls of deaths aren’t going to stop them.
Unfortunately this is one of those things that you can’t significantly develop/test on closed private streets.
Even if we hold this to be true (and I disagree in large part), the point is that Tesla’s systems aren’t at that stage yet. Failing to recognize lights correctly during live demos and such are absolutely things you can test and develop on closed streets or in a lab. Tesla’s shouldn’t be allowed on roads until they’re actually at a point where there are no glaring flaws. And then they should be allowed in smaller numbers.
Do you really think they didn’t test that before they got to this point?
I’m willing to bet they had been through that intersection before hundreds of times and never seen this. It’s not like it can’t detect a stoplight and they’re just out there randomly running through them all.
Of the millions of variables that were around them something blinded it to light this time. The footage from that run has probably been reviewed at nauseam at this point and is done more for them finding the problem than they could have done sitting in a closed warehouse making guesses when the car never fails to detect a red light.
edit: look keep smacking that downvote, but it’s not going to change anything. I hate musk too, but we’re going to make progress toward automated driving unless it becomes more dangerous than existing driver. In the next generation or so, most driving will become automated and all deaths by automobiles will drop significantly. Old and young people will get where they need to go. You cannot automate driving without driving in the real world. If you think they haven’t been doing this in a simulation for a decade, you’re on crack.
I still wouldn’t trust the company with a CEO who unilaterally decided that not having redundant systems makes for a better product.
I absolutely don’t trust the CEO. I don’t even need to trust the company, there are a dozen others trying to work out the same problem.
Do you really think they didn’t test that before they got to this point?
Yes.
well if you’re not going to discuss things in good faith, good bye
That’s true, but I think the issue people have with “AutoPilot” is about marketing.
Tesla brands their cars’ solution as being a full replacement for human interaction and word from Musk, other Tesla employees, media personalities close to Tesla, and fanboys all make out like the car drives itself and the only reason you need a driver in place is to satisfy laws.
It’s bullshit. They know exactly what they’re doing when they do the above, when they call their system “AutoPilot”, when Musk makes claims his cars can travel from one side of the US to the other without human interaction (only to never actually do it, of course!), and sells car upgrades as Full Self Driving support.
If they branded it as Assisted Driving, Advanced Cruise Control, Smart Cruise, or something along those lines, like all the other carmakers do with their similar systems, I’d be less inclined to blame Tesla when there’s an unfortunate incident. I think most would agree with me, too.
But Tesla markets and encourages, both officially and unofficially, that their cars have the ability to drive themselves, look after themselves, and that you’re safe when using the system. It’s a lie and I’m absolutely astounded they’ve had little more than a series of slaps on the wrist for it in most markets.
100% accurate.
They want people to use it so they get data from it. Accidents and deaths will happen… honestly, they’ll always happen… they happen now without it, it’s just more acceptable because it’s human error. Road safety is absolutely awful.
The reason they get away with it is Lobbying, Money and Political favors. They got where they are by greasing a whole shit ton of wheels with dumptrucks of money.
Shitty means, but pretty righteous ways.
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Tbf, Tesla’s are the only cars that actually know you are on your phone and/or not paying attention.
And then make you look at and use a giant touchscreen to control anything, taking your attention off the road.
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So it is true, but it wasn’t true in the past? It can also be disabled by breaking the camera or putting tape over it. The point is that it does do that, which is a true statement.
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Should a couple handfuls of deaths if as you said you can’t test it any other way? Autopilot systems could already be saving thousands of lives if more widely deployed and a lack of good reliable autopilot systems has the opportunity cost of blood on our hands. Human drivers are well established to be dangerous. Testing and release of autopilot systems should be done as safely as possible, but to think the first decade or so of these systems will be flawless seems unreasonable.
Same happened with airplanes
The fact is that most technology that we take for granted today went through a similar evolutionary phase with public use before they became as safe as they are now, especially cars themselves. For well over a century, the automobile has made countless leaps and bounds in safety improvements due to data gathered from public use studies.
We learn by doing.
That’s fine but Waymo, Cruise et al do trials on closed courses and in co-operation with states to assure a high degree of public safety. Tesla is testing without asking regulators.
Do they? I actually, and honestly, have very little to no knowledge of how companies gather, which is why I did not mention them. Can you provide any links to any information about them? I honestly would like to learn more.
Tesla “autopilot” averages one airbag deployment every five million miles.
The average driver in the U.S. averages one every 600,000 miles.
Idk. Doesn’t seem like it works perfectly, but it does seem to work pretty well.
The comparison is a little flat when you consider autopilot has minimum viable weather and road condition requirements to activate, no snow or hail, etc, while human drivers must endure and perform optimally in all road and weather conditions.
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Man that’s some interesting brigading we have going on here. You throw facts at them they just explode.
Oh look; more FUD.
Elon is definitely short on your investment my dude.
That’s your response? Claiming that I think he’s going to pay me?
Not entirely sure where you got that idea lol
I mean, are humans really any better?
Depends on the Autopilot feature.
I was test driving model 3 and summon almost ran over a little kid in the parking lot until my wife ran in front of the car.
At least when my car’s collision sensors misread something, my eyeballs are there for redundancy.
What? No. Of course not.
