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.

  • DominusOfMegadeus
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    1229 days ago

    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.

    • @Aganim@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      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.

    • @tankplanker@lemmy.world
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      208 days ago

      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.

    • @Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      48 days ago

      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.

    • @iopq@lemmy.world
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      28 days ago

      Elon Musk is intelligent, intelligent people make mistakes and believe in weird shit all the time

  • FuglyDuck
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    429 days ago

    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.

    • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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      198 days ago

      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.

      • FuglyDuck
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        18 days ago

        Just to clarify…

        How bad is Budapest traffic? Is it LA? Or New Jersey?

        • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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          18 days ago

          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.

          • FuglyDuck
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            8 days ago

            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.

            • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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              17 days ago

              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.

    • @NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      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.

    • Lung
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      48 days ago

      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

      • FuglyDuck
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        8 days ago

        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.)

    • Ghostalmedia
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      39 days ago

      The worst Telsa driver I know. Hum. That’s a tough competition.

  • @Etterra@discuss.online
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    208 days ago

    Nothing is lamer than superior technology, eh Elon? I mean you may be a looser but at least you’re not a nerd.

  • @finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    198 days ago

    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.

    • Natanael
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      78 days ago

      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

      • @NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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        28 days ago

        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.

          • @NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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            17 days ago

            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.

            • Natanael
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              17 days ago

              Cars use stronger LIDAR lasers than the phones. The bigger range and faster response time requires it.

          • @Widdershins@lemmy.world
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            17 days ago

            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.

  • @MuskyMelon@lemmy.world
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    168 days ago

    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.

  • Maeve
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    58 days ago

    F these companies. Hire drivers, stop spying.