Even if future vehicles DID have lidar, every vehicle up to now does not and therefore will never be truly self-driving. Customers already paid for it with the promise that vehicle hardware is capable. So either they will have to be refunded, or retro fitted with new sensors - at the expense of Tesla I assume. Still no idea how they are valued so much.
Company is still valued at >>1 trilion $, supposedly because they will soon roll out Robotaxis everywhere - 50% of US population before the end of the year, according to Musk !
Meanwhile, 3 months after the start of the operation, it's still open only for influencers, running with ±10 vehicles and operates with a driver in the front seat...
This is so absurd, that could make us forget the 2 million Cybertruck orders or the fact that all Teslas were to become Robotaxis with an OTA update in 2020.
For example: travelling West on 15th street in SF, at Guerrero the leftmost lane turns into left turn only and the Tesla happily continued straight through.
That jolted me out of complacence and the next time it was in the wrong lane, I quickly took over and corrected it. It's happened a few times and I don't use FSD that much.
FSD goes around stopped vehicles without any problem too.
I wouldn't really call him a hater but yeah, he says he thinks it's much better to have lidar.
Having zero control of the software update process will stop me from ever owning a Tesla.
If by "vanguard cohort" you mean "in the first wave to test the new software," then yes; I don't want to be in that group.
They're entirely different products, costs, use cases, risk profiles.
The ForeFlight team will send out a message giving an "all clear" or a "wait for us to update the app before updating to the next iOS/iPadOS release."
> CEO Elon Musk has claimed that Tesla would remove the safety monitor by the end of the year and deliver on its “full self-driving” promises to customers, but he has never shared any data proving that Tesla’s automated driving system is reliable enough to achieve that.
Excluding the level 3, driver is supposed to be in charge stuff, I can recall one death in autonomous driving research - the one that ended Uber's program. For comparison last year the US recorded 39,345 motor vehicle traffic fatalities.
guywithahat•4mo ago
josefritzishere•4mo ago
guywithahat•4mo ago
At no point was tesla ever trying to "hide 3 robotaxi accidents", as the title claims (unless I'm missing something but I don't think I am)
pitpatagain•4mo ago
Compare Waymo report:
"On [XXX] at 10:31 PM PT a Waymo Autonomous Vehicle ("Waymo AV") operating in San Francisco, California was in a collision involving a scooterist on [XXX] at [XXX].
The Waymo AV was stopped at the curb facing north on [XXX] for a passenger drop-off when the passenger in the Waymo AV opened the rear right door. As the rear right door was being opened by the passenger, a scooter ....
Waymo is reporting this crash under Request No. 2 of Standing General Order 2021-01. Waymo may supplement or correct its reporting with additional information as it may become available."
Tesla reports is:
"[REDACTED, MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION]"
Tesla has consistently tried to have it both ways saying they are "not autonomous" and therefore don't have to report, but also then claiming in other contexts that they are driving huge numbers of "autonomous" miles.
So now they finally do a handful of reports and it's all REDACTED? They are finally doing barely what's required but also not being forthcoming at all.
guywithahat•4mo ago
> Tesla is trying to hide 3 Robotaxi accidents
is strictly false. They reported the accidents and have done everything properly, you just don't like the way its formatted. Got it. I think your definition of the word hide is too different to come to a consensus.
pitpatagain•4mo ago
They have reported that accidents happened, and redacted all of what actually happened. It's very clear what the complaint is in the article despite how hung up on the headline you are.
guywithahat•4mo ago
pitpatagain•4mo ago
The NHTSA has an active probe into Tesla for not following the reporting guidelines for their level 2 systems: https://apnews.com/article/tesla-crashes-self-driving-robota...
Specifically that they haven't been reporting on time, months instead of the required days.
"If they had been more impactful accidents there would be more public information." does not track with Tesla's history of reporting thus far.
You can make excuses all you want for them but late reports + redacting information other companies do not reads loud and clear as "trying to hide something" to me, not "legit autonomous vehicle company that wants to establish reliability and safety to the public".
pitpatagain•4mo ago
ModernMech•4mo ago
But now that Tesla is trying to be more autonomous robotaxi service, they're required to report more details about their accidents.
According to the article, Tesla's competitors (like Waymo) are very forthcoming about the incidents. They are probably following the long tradition in engineering of learning from your mistakes by investigating them thoroughly and doing root-cause analysis.
Tesla cannot do this, because if they do a thorough root-cause analysis of why their system fails more than others, they will inevitably arrive at the conclusion it's due to the sensor stack being camera-only. And Tesla cannot admit that because Musk can't admit he was wrong.
So instead they're going down the path of being cagey about the details of their accidents. I don't know how long these reports take to generate but there are 2.5 months worth of reports that have not yet been released.
Meanwhile, Musk has committed to ditching the safety monitors by the end of the year, and he's not going to be able to do that if Tesla's robotaxi service is unreliable. But he's also not willing to do what it takes to make the service more reliable, which is add LiDAR to the system. So... it will be interesting to see what happens at the end of the year.
Animats•4mo ago
Führerprinzip [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip
pitpatagain•4mo ago
The weird thing is that between the extremely underwhelming tiny supervised test they run in Austin and the nonsensical permitting games they want to play in California, they don't really seem like a company that actually wants to launch a robotaxi.
apothegm•4mo ago
ModernMech•4mo ago
Because they can't. They don't have the technology to do so, despite promising for years it's right around the corner. Musk backed Tesla into a corner by promising dates and missing them several times, and this is just another instance of that. They're playing a shell game and they've been able to hide the ball so far by calling things "beta" or a "rollout" or "supervised", but when it comes to robot axis they have to actually be autonomous, and Tesla tech cannot deliver that.
So all I'm wondering is where they're going to hide the ball next. I don't think they can push robotaxis any longer, which is why you see Musk preemptively suggesting robots and AI are the future of Tesla. Actually I think he's more likely to claim victory in self driving, ditch the entire car company saying it's so last century, and pivot Tesla into robotics than to actually release failure robotaxis. It's the only way he can keep the grift going; the self driving grift is done.
Zigurd•4mo ago
Here is a prediction: when they don't actually get to remove the safety drivers, Elon will blame regulators and rage quit the Robo taxi game.
ModernMech•4mo ago