this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
377 points (97.7% liked)

Technology

59777 readers
4723 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] harrybo93 105 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Questions are growing? Haven’t they been out already for fucking years??

[–] [email protected] 56 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Tesla keeps promising things are fixed in the next update, then the next update, and so on. I don't think Tealas have the proper sensors to avoid collisions and their algorithms don't think like an attentive driver does.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Everybody knows that tesla sacrificed lidar sensors with cameras because it was cheaper. Yes, lidar can do it easily

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] cm0002 43 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I've been questioning it since the day Mushk said "We don't need fancy pants LiDAR, regular cameras are all you need!"

As if a safety critical system shouldn't have backups or alternative sensors for verifying shit

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

Also things like adverse weather conditions exist, and I think sometimes the sun goes out.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes and because cams see so well in rain and fog 😅

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Passerby6497 7 points 3 months ago

Yes growing. They were birthed years ago, and Elon has done his best to nurture them so they grow big and strong

[–] NeoNachtwaechter 90 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The company has cautioned that cars equipped with the system cannot actually drive themselves and that motorists must be ready at all times to intervene if necessary.

This describes a level 2 system...

And in less than two months, the company is scheduled to unveil a vehicle built expressly to be a robotaxi.

...but this would require a level 4 system.

“It’s not even close, and it’s not going to be next year,” said Michael Brooks, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety.

And so I tend to agree, fully.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 3 months ago (2 children)

This will be the reason Tesla falls behind the rest of the automotive industry, wasting money on vanity projects instead of developing better vehicles.

The 3, Y, and the huge number of Chinese EVs being sold around the world have shown there is a huge market for affordable, practical electric vehicles, and what are they developing? A vehicle that won't be able to fulfill it's intended role for a decade almost everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

When I see EVs (southern Netherlands) they are mostly model S or non-Teslas from mostly VW. Autonomous vehicles aren't even allowed here AFAIK.

Edit: I am agreeing with you, for clarity's sake.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

My understanding is that the only places in the world where self-driving vehicles are actually legal is the UK and weirdly Tehran or something very odd like that.

But that's all just a technicality, most jurisdictions say you can't have them because we haven't verified their safety. The UK says you can have them but only in very limited testing scenarios (limited speed, limited to certain roads in a mapped area). But they both effectively amount to the same thing.

[–] AA5B 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I think the focus on AI is what will be the problem. Sure, AI is cool, and sure you need advances for self-driving, but you’re a car manufacturer and can’t neglect car manufacturing

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thing is, I quite like the idea of a self driving car. I do whitewater kayaking, and I'd love to be able to do a trip and have my car meet me at the end.

It's becoming increasingly obvious this isn't happening any time soon though, and developing a vehicle that is totally reliant on the technology doesn't seem like a smart idea.

[–] dual_sport_dork 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's possible just at the outside that one of the Waymo autonomous taxis could pull it off, but they rely on that giant sensor lump on the roof so you'd have nowhere to put your boat...

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Aceticon 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (6 children)

All that stuff is what justifies Tesla being treated as a Tech Stock rather than an Automotive Stock and hence having Stock Prices which are 10x or 20x what an auto-maker with similar Revenue and Margins would have.

Dropping the techno-bollocks that underpins their "we're disrupting the Auto industry with our Technology and will become the Google of cars" story and just focusing on being good at making electric cars would mean loosing the huge "we're a Tech Stock" premium that keeps Tech companies' stock prices high even when they're loosing money (the valuations are justified by investors with the expectation that they will one day dominate entire markets, like Google or Apple), and hence accepting their stock falling 90%, from Uber style valuations to Ford style valuations.

I doubt shareholders will ever accept that, hence I expect Tesla will just keep "faking until you make it" all the while getting farther and farther away from making it, until eventually they crash far harder (possibly even cease to exist in the next decade or two) than it would happen if they just settled down to be just another auto-maker. (In my mind I have the image of the Coyote from Road-Runner running out of track, going over the cliff and keeping on running until noticing he's not running on ground anymore and is high up in the air)

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] JustAnotherKay 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Aren't level 4 systems still illegal in the US anyway? I remember Volkswagen holding off on a minibus due to this limitation when they managed to create a working proof of concept 8ish years ago

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

My understanding is that they're not illegal in so much as they would have to be proven to actually work. Since no one's ever been able to do this to the satisfaction of the regulators effectively self-driving cars are illegal.

We have Tesla's on the road anyway, so I don't quite understand how that works.

They are only effectively illegal right up until they're not. If a company came up with a genuinely self-driving vehicle my understanding is that it would be authorized but they would have to actually demonstrate it, and that's possibly more than the corporations really want to take on at the moment.

Presumably being second to market is the more cost-effective option so everyone's holding off until someone does it first.

[–] AA5B 5 points 3 months ago

We have Tesla’s on the road anyway, so I don’t quite understand how that works.

The feature marketed as “Full Self-Drivinng” is qualified as a beta feature undergoing test and that it requires a human to be in control at all times. It also makes at least some effort to ensure a human actually is paying attention.

You could certainly quibble that maybe it’s not obvious to all, but it is there.

Also I believe the human sensing was much easier to trick until last fall. But if you have to go out of your way to trick it, how can you claim you didn’t know it wanted a human in control?

[–] JustAnotherKay 2 points 3 months ago

That makes sense. The VW I'm thinking of may have been level 3 (trying to remember autonomous driving levels off the top of my head so don't quote me on this), as I believe it needed guidance from on-road infrastructure to double check safety issues, which would have obviously been too much hassle for the US.

The proof of concept was miles ahead of Tesla has ever been, though, so it's unfortunate that we can't be bothered to add some sensors to the road

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Aceticon 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Also this seems to very much be them suffering from the 90/10 problem that some many software projects suffer from: you can do 90% of the work with 10% of the effort but that also means it takes 90% of the work to do the other 10%.

Earlier people from the outside perceived Tesla as being ahead of everybody else on this because they just started before just about everybody else, were riding the easy part of the curve were you're constant delivering improvements because you're just tackling the easy bits, and they were probably even doing a rush job and taking shortcuts to maintain that apperarence of being ahead of the rest because that maintained an appeareance of Tesla as a Tech Stock rather than an Auto Industry Stock, hence with market valuations 10x or 20x higher than they would others which meant sky-high Tesla Stock Prices justified by how "technologically ahead" they were in a "key future technology" - the company was just executing a typical conman strategy of looking like they were making it in the hope that their early-mover status and the increasing investor funding that strategy pulls in would allow them to actually make it before everybody else or at least with a larger installed base, similarly to how Theranos was doing only unlike that company Tesla did just the right balance of deceit and reality to just be on the right side of the Laws for Fraud.

Tech companies absolutelly can get away with doing this during the early and easy parts of the project because for non-experts it looks like they're doing fast progress - which is why Startups nowadays (which is an Era of way more bullshitty and even fraud in the Industry than, say, pre-2000) commonly do things exactly like this - but then they reach the hard part, progress speed naturaly goes down a lot (the project transitions from the 90%-results/10%-work speed to the 10/90% one) plus all the the early shortcuts (a.k.a. Technical Debt) come due to be paid for: "out of control car careening down the hill" meet "concrete wall".

Finally, I wouldn't at all be surprised if they're stuck down a dead-end for the technology which is the wrong way to reach level 4 and have to go back and redo much if not most of that work they did as a rush job to keep impressing investors and ill-informed customers with how "ahead of the pack" the were. Under the leadership of Musk I suspect that they will never be able to reach level 4.

[–] NeoNachtwaechter 5 points 3 months ago

Under the leadership of Musk I suspect that they will never be able to reach level 4.

Don't know if he even wants to go up to level 3.

As long as he can sell these level 2 systems and tell people these were real robotaxis :)

"And they are sooo extremely safe. Just look at our statistics!" ;)

[–] exanime 62 points 3 months ago

Tesla's Full Self Driving does not exist. If it did, it would be used in the ridiculous loop they built in Vegas which is literally like 10% of the complexity of driving in a real road... yet it is not even good enough to be piloted there.

[–] dgmib 50 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Tesla’s biggest issue is Musk.

Tesla held a commanding lead over the other automakers in the self-driving segment a few years ago. Now they’ve all mostly caught up thanks to Musk’s unhinged firings. Tesla lost some of its best talent for no other reason than not wanting to work for an egomaniacal billionaire nut job.

Tesla needs to fire Musk before he runs it into the ground just like he’s done to Twitter.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 months ago (3 children)

They're only ahead of everyone else because they were prepared to release a product that was untested and quite possibly unsafe, whereas the other car manufacturers realized that would be detrimental to their business, both in terms of reputation, and the inevitable lawsuits. Tesla just does whatever though.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] mojofrododojo 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

This times 50x with SpaceX. There's ample justification to nationalize it at this point with Musk's erratic behavior.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

SpaceX still has the benefit of being run by someone who is at least somewhat less unhinged (shotwell)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Well, and neurolink… It is so fascinating but every time musk starts talking again all the hype is lost with all the BS he is talking…

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Tesla has never, ever, had anything remotely resembling a lead in autonomous vehicles. The actual AV industry doesn't consider them part of it.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago

Tech bros underestimating the complexity of real life yet again

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Is the self driving in the room with us right now?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Shhhh! I accidentally opened this thread while my phone was connected and EVERYTHING IS FINE RECALCULATING ROUTE.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (10 children)
load more comments (10 replies)
[–] breadsmasher 8 points 3 months ago

but guyz musko said tesla is an ai company now

/s

[–] Snapz 4 points 3 months ago

So funny that all the musk brigaders on here, in full force, can only collectively muster 4 downvotes...

You are the wet farts of humanity.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Honestly there's so much shit about Tesla's software on the Internet. I own a model y with "FSD" and I can confidently say that the current version (12.5.3) is a 90% solution. Is it perfect? No. Can it do everything? No. Can it drive me to work and back, to the grocery store, and whatever else I need without me intervening? Yes it can, and has no issues 90% of the time. Obviously for it to be considered level 5 or whatever it needs to work 99.999% of the time, but it's good enough right now for me to not only use it regularly, but to also enjoy using it.

It's an awesome piece of software and it still blows my mind to watch my car drive me around. We are living in the future.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I recently rode in a Tesla on FSD for over 26 hours of freeway travel. It was flawless the entire time.

On city streets? 90% was about right. It once took too sharp of a turn at a double right turn and spooked the driver next to us (although it didn't cross into their lane, just got close), and another time decided to only change lanes halfway into the left turn lane.

I agree that it needs to be near 100% on city streets before it's ready for launch because that 10% difference is HUGE when it comes to safety. If their "level 5" taxi isn't using some vastly improved software, it needs to be kept off the street.

[–] Bell 6 points 3 months ago

Same. I love my FSD and I've watched it go from 80% a few years ago to around 95% now.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

I don't even want to turn on the speed limiter because I'm getting random fantom breaking, it's really infuriating.

load more comments
view more: next ›