The company’s rollout of its new driverless cars has gotten off to a wobbly start – and rival Waymo remains well ahead
After years of promising investors that millions of Tesla robotaxis would soon fill the streets, Elon Musk debuted his driverless car service in a limited public rollout in Austin, Texas. It did not go smoothly.
The 22 June launch initially appeared successful enough, with a flood of videos from pro-Tesla social media influencers praising the service and sharing footage of their rides. Musk celebrated it as a triumph, and the following day, Tesla’s stock rose nearly 10%.
What quickly became apparent, however, was that the same influencer videos Musk promoted also depicted the self-driving cars appearing to break traffic laws or struggle to properly function. By Tuesday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had opened an investigation into the service and requested information from Tesla on the incidents.
Musk maintains that camera-only technology is the most “human” way to approach self-driving, since people use their eyes to navigate the road.
Newsflash for you, Elon. Most people are terrible drivers. We should be striving to do better as a society, not imitate something that already sucks.
Musk maintains that camera-only technology is the most “human” way to approach self-driving, since people use their eyes to navigate the road.
A few years ago I was driving on the motorway, came up on a bend in the road and was greeted by a dense freak fog bank out of nowhere. I immediately let go of the accelerator to reduce speed, at the same time my dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree and a collision alert started blaring. That gave me enough time to apply the brakes and prevent a collision with the first and only traffic jam I’ve ever seen there.
I see no reason to not augment our own capabilities with radar and lidar, to see what we as humans can’t.
Imagine if we could “see” in those wavelengths!
…
Don’t tell Musk I said that
Now hiring for experimental brain surgery subjects! Lots of money! Sign these twelve waivers.
Very good survival rates likely!
M’profits!
This was him justifying what was a cost saving decision that became a face saving battle for him personally as everyone told him he was wrong.
If there is one thing Elon cannot stand above all others is admitting he was wrong, especially when he has spent years promising this and now he would have to retrofit at his cost Lidar to all those cars he sold as self driving ready with an expensive optional extra.
He might be able to avoid any sort of punishment from the US government as long as he stays in Trumps good books, but he will not be able to do so in Europe or similar.
waymo is already superior to tesla in self driving,waymo has been around for a few years already. teslas already too late into the game.
Do we need any more evidence that his financial success has nothing to do with intelligence?
Elon Musk is intelligent, intelligent people make mistakes and believe in weird shit all the time
Ahh yes, the intelligent people who constantly scream about woke mind viruses and support the super stable genius Trump
In that case he thought Trump would do what he told him and that didn’t turn out to be the case
Ahh yes, the intelligent people who believe Trump’s constant lies
What’s funny here is that Tesla used all of the Tesla owners driving habits to train.
One thing this means is that when it’s “socially acceptable” to go +20mph it’s going to. Not that that makes it right, but what it also means is that they didn’t sanitize their data.
So think of the worst Tesla driver you know. They helped train FSD.
Relevant:
Every time I see this I chuckle regardless of how many times.
There is a segment of highway near Budapest where cops often hang out on an overpass with a speed camera. Teslas do a light phantom brake under that overpass, like going from speed limit to 80% speed limit, because apparently the car learned that that’s what it should do there.
I wouldn’t have believed it’s that stupid, but there is a whole discussion on local owner groups about that specific spot, and I’ve also seen it first hand from the passenger seat.
Just to clarify…
How bad is Budapest traffic? Is it LA? Or New Jersey?
Most drivers are good at driving, terrible at being good people. So it’s not like you get cut off a lot, and there is less texting and driving than in other places, but there are more people road raging. I’ve seen someone getting brake checked by police, and I’ve also seen someone brake checking police.
Traffic jams happen, but it’s not LA level. The roads are terrible though. The motorway that this thing is on is notoriously unsafe because it has much tighter turns that it should have, and it’s rated 110 kmh rather than 130 as a result, and that is still too fast.
Most drivers are good at driving,
[x] doubt. :P
but that’s just because I assume everyone is a terrible driver. Around here, we have people struggling with the whole zipper merge thing, though.
Ok, let me expand on that. Drivers in Hungary tend to be more attentive and in control of their vehicles, but also more aggressive than in Western Europe is what I mean.
In much of Europe you don’t need a car to live, so the training requirements to get a driving licence are higher.
I mean the data IS sanitized, but not to the level that would have required certain human things to not happen.
Part of what’s led to its improvement over the years is better going through the data and removing bad things or properly labeling them.
That left turn that was cut to short makes it into the first set of training as a cursory look at it seemed okay, and then they see that cars are cutting turns to short. So they go through the data again and try to find examples of it and then label them properly so it doesn’t think it’s okay.
But that’s not a simple process, and then trying to only have certain good behaviors gets really hard because they’re actually very uncommon in normal driving because the bad behavior is socially acceptable.
The thing is that you have to break the law to be an effective and even safe driver. Going way under the limit or refusing to go into the opposite lane for a moment means that you cause traffic congestion and piss people off. Waymos definitely break laws at times, I’ve seen it personally. And other times waymos get too “safe” and end up locked in place for 30 min at a time. The real world is a chaotic place and there’s always been a discrepancy between what the laws are and how people actually drive. Lidar helps see things humans cant, but the main problem is the intelligence required, which may improve over time
The biggest problem is if you’re training in the extremes.
And they did.
The stopping for 30 minutes has more to do with “I don’t know”, which is something Tesla could do more of, imo. (And certainly not in the way they just set you up for a crash and hand it over after it’s too late.)
The worst Telsa driver I know. Hum. That’s a tough competition.
Nothing is lamer than superior technology, eh Elon? I mean you may be a looser but at least you’re not a nerd.
LiDAR is fucking awesome, actually. There’s some LiDAR data on USGS website for free that shows high detail aerial geographic height-maps, I once used some to create a 3D model of a beach in California.
The only viable competition to LIDAR is structured light (see Leap Motion, there’s equivalent sensors for cars), which uses an IR source with patterned light and multiple high frame rate cameras to calculate depth from the reflections. In theory light field photography with special lenses is possible too, but far more computationally heavy for real-time use IIRC
There’s some safety issues with LIDAR at close range (it’s a laser! it can damage cameras, etc), which is basically the main reason to not use it. But Tesla are dumb enough to try to replace them with cameras alone, and not even using proper multi-camera techniques to calculate depth
Can it really cause damage? Lidar is flown constantly, and all of googles street view had been ran with lidar. That’s millions of miles of data collection and I haven’t heard of any negative effects. I get that it is a laser, but is duration and distance must be big factors.
Not saying you are wrong, just looking to quanitfy the risks.
Thanks for the article. That is interesting. It also is confusing that they wrote “Lidar is not the only thing that can damage camera sensors – lasers are just as harmful.” Uh…Lidar is Laser.
But it is in so many fields, even devices with cameras. Apple has been adding Lidar to their phones/tablets for 5 years now. Why is this an issue now? Like I said, there is a TON of Lidar in use everyday.
Cars use stronger LIDAR lasers than the phones. The bigger range and faster response time requires it.
You mean to say the cars of the future can take out security cameras. That’s not a negative. Security cameras are the surveillance state. If you want to take them out with today’s cars you’ve gotta ram them and bang out the dents in your car.
I bet it has to do with the costs to implement.
So stupid to deride a technology that a computer can process far better than video alone. Its only because he can’t own and monetize it.
This is the same guy who said (paraphrased) “they do it with 4 bolts so why can’t I do it with just 2?”
He meant expensive.
Yeah that’s easily $100 her could be pocketing himself.
“LiDAR is lame!”
Not even inanimate objects are safe from his projection.
Boring tech works
F these companies. Hire drivers, stop spying.
Yo it’s not lame. It can see stuff with no lights lol.
