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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."

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[–] cm0002 244 points 1 year ago (41 children)

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?!

[–] Ottomateeverything 109 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] TheRealKuni 94 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Also, my robot vacuum has LiDAR. It’s not expensive relative to a car.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Sondermotor 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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 ~~cult~~ retail 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.

[–] APassenger 7 points 1 year ago

Rebrand to Ludicrous Self Drive and add back LIDAR.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It's actually gotten cheaper since they figured out how to make it solid state.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Skimping on cost is how disasters happen. Ask Richard Hammond. "Spared no expense" my ass, hire more than 2 programmers, you cheap fuck.

Edit: This was supposed to be a Jurassic Park reference, but my dumb ass mixed up John Hammond and Richard Hammond. That's what I get for watching Top Gear and reading at the same time.

[–] ericisshort 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Were Richard Hammond’s many crashes a result of cost skimping? If so, I had no idea. Could you elaborate?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was under the impression that Hammond’s serious crashes were a combination of bad luck and getting a bit too spicy when driving in some already-risky situations. I, too, would appreciate some corroboration.

[–] ericisshort 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Same here. I did a little googling and can’t find any corroborating evidence, but I also learned that Hammond’s Grand Tour insurance premiums are now more expensive than Top Gear’s budgets were for entire specials.

[–] Caradoc879 4 points 1 year ago

That has to be the real reason they've canceled Grand Tour

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

As someone who hasn't much watched Top Gear, I was cracking up at your Jurassic Park reference until I saw your edit and was like "Wait a minute."

Top Gear? Jurassic Park? Either way: Hold on to your butts.

😆

[–] [email protected] 102 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's terrifying for showing how little he understands about the problem he is attempting to solve.

Humans use up to four senses at times to accomplish the task of driving.

@mosiacmango
@cm0002

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

I can add more, we don't only have five senses. Elementary school propoganda that is. Here's all the ones I can think of while driving.

  1. Vision
  2. Hearing
  3. Tactile feedback from wheel, pedals, you could break this down further into skin tactile pressure receptors, and also receptors of muscle tension, though muscle tension and stretching receptors also involved in number 4
  4. Proprioception, where your limbs and body are in space
  5. Rotational acceleration (semi circular canals)
  6. Linear acceleration (utricle and saccule)
  7. Smell, okay this might be a stretch but, some engine issues can be smelly

And that doesn't even consider higher order processing and actual integration of all these things which despite all it's gains with Ai recently can't match all the capabilities of the brain to integrate all that information or deal with novel stimuli. Point is Elon, add more sensors to your dang cars so they're less likely to kill people. And people aren't even perfect at driving, why would we limit it to only our senses anyways? So dumb

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Licking the steering wheel makes it five

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

"Tastes like danger."

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reminds me of Mao not brushing his teeth, because tigers didn't brush theirs either.

[–] RainyRat 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did he also eat his meat raw and sleep in trees?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Nah that would be silly.

Did deflower a generation of young girls though, who would suffer the agony of his presumed halitosis

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

Ah, but you see, his reasoning is that what if the camera and lidar disagree, then what? With only a camera based system, there is only one truth with no conflicts!

Like when the camera sees the broad side of a white truck as clear skies and slams right at it, there was never any conflict anywhere, everything went just as it was suppo... Wait, shit.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

sees the broad side of a white truck as clear skies and slams right at it

RIP Joshua Brown:

The truck driver, Frank Baressi, 62, told the Associated Press that the Tesla driver Joshua Brown, 40, was “playing Harry Potter on the TV screen” during the collision and was driving so fast that “he went so fast through my trailer I didn’t see him”.

[–] girthero 13 points 1 year ago

he went so fast through my trailer I didn’t see him”.

Lidar would still prevail over stupidity in this situation. It does a better job detecting massive objects cars can't go through.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The in-car system shouldn't allow you to watch a movie wtf

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Allegedly it was on a portable DVD player

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