This is from from November 2021, but I'm still highlighting it because it is just terrifying (Correct time, though the video later on also exhibits inabilities of the system): https://youtu.be/9wRRClg_aM8?t=113
I think it's not just that. When Tesla started to with their FSD journey, they had to determine what sensors they can add to the car. Lidars back then were way more expensive than they are now, and it wouldn't have been feasible to add them at that time.
They can't add them now to new vehicles because they promised the vehicles back then are only a software update away from full autonomy [1]. Building on Lidar now would mean developing on 2 heavily differentiating stacks. Going back on the promise of old Tesla's being "FSD capable" would introduce a huge liability.
Long story short, Tesla's stance on Lidar determined 8 years ago, without the option to revise the decision with future developments.
[1] Note this has turned into "we'll only have to replace the computer in the car", which is still doable, contrary to adding sensors to the existing vehicle.
Another country that comes to mind is India - but I've never been enough of a Bollywood fan to be able to make any assessment on this topic.
But it's a very effective tool to shape public opinion. I'm fairly certain without the overwhelmingly heroic portrait of (members of) the military, the public would be more inclined to question the huge investments that go into warfare. Particularly the display of highly achieved individuals in the military leads to both public respect of military members, and enlistings to service.
We’re all vulnerable to this. Just here in tech we’ve deified the guy in a t-shirt/hoodie (zucks of the world) or mythical 10x programmers, built up and tore down people like Adam Neumann, all caricatures.
Propaganda works sadly.
With respect to war, it takes observing a war play out to realize how stupid it actually is. It took Americans 20 years of just watching Iraq/Afghanistan to conclude all that nationalism stuff is just not worth it at all. I don’t know how it’s all going to play out in the next 50 years, but I’m pretty sure in the aftermath of any American/Chinese conflict the conclusion of america-bad by the Chinese and China-bad by the Americans will just seem quite silly also.
Haider is the only Indian movie that I can think of that doesn't take the establishment position when it comes to the portrayal of the armed forces.
More recently, a certain Canadian national has carved out a niche for himself by staring in ultra patriotic movies that are very popular with the Indian audience.
> FWIW, I hear he’s applying to become an Indian citizen again.
He claimed to have applied for an Indian passport in 2019. But then again he claimed he was an honorary citizen of Canada in the past. He's not exactly a reliable source.
As much as it would be a solution to Tesla's problem, it would impact Tesla's overall plan and strategy. Automatically disengaging when emergency vehicles are detected is a huge barrier in their selling strategy ("It can drive itself, it's just not allowed yet to for legal reasons, but soon").
I think this also translates to self-driving cars. I actually think automated cars have an edge there, because of 2 reasons:
1. Improved visibility: A human driver sits in the driver seat, and looks at the outside world from inside the car - partly through mirrors, partly with the view obscured. A self-driving car (at last current potential vehicles) has a view without being obstructed by the car's frame.
2. No limitation on focus: As a human driver, I can look to the front, or the back, or the sides, but I can't look everywhere all the time. I can do my best to maintain an overview of my surroundings, but need to update this constantly by changing where I'm looking - if I want to see if there's someone behind me, I (for a moment) have to stop looking where I'm going. Automated vehicles don't need to stop looking to the front to see to their back or the side. They can see a car 200 feet away coming from the right without having to miss the pedestrian coming from the left.
I'm not saying that self-proclaimed self-driving cars do this already, but looking at perception capabilities, self-driving cars have the potential to avoid more accidents than humans.
I think Lvl3 is one of the most dangerous levels a car can be at, based on the experience Waymo (back then Chauffeur) made: Humans are even worse at monitoring than they are at driving. It's incredibly boring. Their test-drivers (who got extensive training for what to do and what not to do) started to do anything but pay attention, including taking a nap, before they pulled the plug on the incremental approach.
And we see this partially with Tesla now. Some drivers start to trust the system so much that they start to do anything but pay attention - partially even bypassing the pesky systems that remind them that they are required to take over at any moment.
To be fair: Self-driving cars that can drive safer than some drivers already exist. Simply due to the nature how unsafe some humans drive. (Some of these drivers are elderly, some of these drivers are racers who think everyone slower than them drives like a grandma).
I'd be interested though why you think self-driving cars will not exist. Care to elaborate?
I'm more or less of the same opinion and honestly. The fact that human drivers are unsafe adding new "automated" drivers in the road would automatically make the human one safer? I don't think so. Before you can reach a point where all the cars are fully autonomous you'd need decades if not century and we're here discussing that having them on the road would be better. Well, we'd see what data once this cars are around brings to us, but human machine mixture in a road sounds like a mess that we'd want to be saved from.
Reason why self driving cars are rather hard to be mainstream:
- they're freaking expensive, currently, even the "normal cars" are not always accessible to everyone in this planet, yet we assume that the entire world population has enough money to buy Teslas and sleep while going to work like is an extension of California.
- despite having common traffic rules, people drive how they want to. If you've drove long enough and in different places of the world you'd notice that: traffic rules are an opinion, driving style changes from city to city within the same country, if not district to district. "Exception" are the norm: people park where they're not supposed to, people go where they're not supposed to, people stop where they're not supposed to like all the time.
- self driving cars make economical sense only under certain conditions, and even then the time spent automating that is yet to be proven effective. Of course you can argue that we've something working, but at this stage is rather a prototype that handle base cases.
If we want to have self driving car, just have them only. Not mix them with human to create a perfect condition to have new accidents were the insurance would have challenging time on defining who's fault.
I'd rather invest money on mass transportation systems (eg. Metro, train, buses)
Auotmated drivers don't make the human driver safer - they (should) make traffic safer by reducing the number of human drivers that would cause accidents. I don't think we're there yet, but I also don't think this is centuries away, based on the progress made in recent years. I also don't think this will be instantly world-wide: Distribution of automated vehicles will be just like the distribution of any other commodity. In some parts of this world it's infeasible to have a car for a significant portion of the population - it'd be ridiculous to assume those parts of the world will have self-driving cars by the time they're available in the Bay Area.
It's also inevitable that human and automated drivers will share infrastructure. That's where the development is going, it's what will happen. There won't be a switch like "from tomorrow on, only automated vehicles can drive in San Francisco".
I agree with the mass transportation system investment, particularly in the US. But if you argue against financial feasibility of self-driving cars in regions, you have to apply the same scrutiny to public transport investments.
My argument if that a mix of human plus self driving cars as yet to be tried at massive scale (eg. 50% self driving / 50% human or whatever that percentage is). With this mixture I don't think we will be able to actually "reduce" accident just because there are less human.
You've to see the distribution of whom create accident, example if 80% is caused by distraction then maybe you could reduce the number of accident by having self driving cars. But most of the current modern cars have many automatic detector that get triggered when a danger is detected.
We can say that these cars are expensive and as such people who buy old cars without this systems are more likely to cause accident.
The same people won't buy self driving cars due to the cost. So I'd argue that maybe we won't see much improvement unless a large percentage of people actually buy self driving cars
The technology is century away for mass distribution, same as cars nowadays are still not available in evey household around the world and there are plenty of countries driving super polluting cars taken from "first world" country
Ok, I think we're having 2 separate conversations:
a) What's the impact of self-driving cars at what point of distribution
and b) What's the distribution of self-driving cars going to be.
Regarding the impact: modern vehicles are getting better at minimizing the impact of accidents, and are starting to avoid accidents, mostly in the form of avoiding rear-ending another vehicle. But Self-driving cars are on another level there: They can recognize someone possibly running a red light, and act accordingly (not entering the intersection, evacuating the intersection quickly, etc.). They have sensors to continuously monitor their surroundings with a focus a human can't have, and modern vehicles don't bring the sensors for it because of the actions a human-driven vehicle can take are highly limited (Maybe a warning-beep, tightening seatbelts and prepping to fire airbags - but nothing in terms of avoidance. And you need a fairly fancy new vehicle for that). Additionally, also drivers of expensive / new vehicles crash. They have phones like anyone else, drink like anyone else, get tired or distracted like anyone else.
Regarding the distribution of self-driving cars: As I said, it's not feasible to assume that by the time you can buy or rent a self-driving car in the bay area, you'll also be able to buy or rent a self-driving car in Mogadishu. Additionally, ownership is one aspect of automated vehicles. Companies also aim for a service-type of business, where you basically take a cab - just without a driver (who again can get distracted, tired, etc.)
Now, if you say "we're a century away from having 50% self-driving cars in Somalia" - I wouldn't disagree. But the comment that started this discussion (and to which you said you have more or less the same opinion) questioned their present and future existence:
> Self-driving cars do not (and will not, if you ask me) exist
> Companies also aim for a service-type of business, where you basically take a cab - just without a driver (who again can get distracted, tired, etc.)
I'm not seeing this with the current situation, given that everybody is aiming to sell the same amount of cars, but just self driving. That's how Tesla get the evaluation that it gets (total addressable market) and I can't see a fleet of robo taxi in the horizon yet.
So said, I'd agree if this is what we're leaning towards but again, is not what it seems to be going to be. If that would be the case, it falls under the "mass transportation" that I was referring to before.
> and to which you said you have more or less the same opinion
Well, they do not exists yet (Tesla even suggest not to run their car autonomously). Will not exists to the extend that we think they'd exists.
I think there would be space in which self driving will be probably adopted (eg. For example last mile delivery, robo taxi etc) but I can't see this being something that everybody must have. We can optimize the amount of cars around the roads by just sharing them. Yet all the current automakers + new one are addressing the problem (once again) but giving each and everyone of us a new self driving car. We need way less car, less pollution (electric cars still pollute, way less, but differently) more mass transportation systems. I can't see how this world can work with 7 billion people owning a car. Luckily there are countries where you can live without a car and where mass transportation is a thing.
So said, I was not the one writing that comment and I would've have said something like that either.
It's what Waymo's is currently doing. So far, you only can get automated Taxis (in some regions) - you cannot buy an automated vehicle yet.
As I see we do agree that they will exist - and we also agree that they will never have 100% worldwide adoption. That would be a ludicrous assumption. Someone not buying a car now will not buy a self-driving car either. Someone never taking a cab will not take a driverless cab. I don't know how that was assumed or where that was ever claimed.
I have my doubts about V2V and I2V communications. They'd simplify the task for automated systems, but come with a rat tail of problems.
I2V is incredibly hard to scale, and is a duplicated implementation of a pre-existing system (road markings & signs). Any system with duplicated implementations will grow inconsistencies. In those situations, the automated driver will be driving based on a differently perceived environment than the human driver - and it'll be hard to know. The automated system would also need to read lane markings & signs to recognize these inconsistencies and act accordingly, at which point the I2V communication is just a crutch to help the automated vehicle, reducing it's utility and hence the cost-value ratio (which is already insanely high).
V2V communication is unreliable by the fact that older vehicles won't support it, so automated vehicles won't be able to communicate with some (initially: most) cars. They'll need to be able to drive safely without communicating with nearby vehicles, so V2V is again just a "bonus" system a vehicle must not rely on.
Automated drivers will be safer than human drivers with time. It's an incredibly hard problem to solve, but it will be solved. Technology is improving continuously, and different companies are trying different approaches to solve the problem - which makes me optimistic in terms of automated drivers. Becoming safer than human drivers is mostly a matter of being able to drive with an automated system based on infrastructure optimized for humans. Sources of accidents will shift: From driver impairment, distraction and ignorance of rules, to misinterpretation of the environment. Additionally, and I think this is the key: If an accident happens, at best the involved human drivers improve their reaction to the specific situation. Automated drivers can share this new knowledge across the entire fleet.
I'm confused, How exactly is Tesla advertising the car where you don't have to pay attention? It even explicitly tells you to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention.
They call it Autopilot. On their car configuration tool, the text that appears in the biggest font says "Full Self-Driving Capability". The fine print doesn't matter - Tesla is advertising more than it can deliver.
Or this wonderful paragraph: "Navigate on Autopilot: automatic driving from highway on-ramp to off-ramp including interchanges and overtaking slower cars."
> They call it Autopilot. On their car configuration tool, the text that appears in the biggest font says "Full Self-Driving Capability".
I don't think you understand. "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving Capability" (FSD) are two completely different features. Autopilot comes free as standar.
While FSD is an optional feature, that adds things like: Navigate on Autopilot, Summon, Auto Park, Auto Lane Change etc.
FSD Beta can take you from point A to B with minimal to zero interventions.
"Autopilot" and "Navigate on Autopilot" are separate features? "Automatic driving" actually means "carefully supervised driving"? "Full self driving" means the exact opposite and requires your full attention?
If you can't see how this is massively confusing and misleading to consumers you've been a Tesla user for too long and need to step back for.some objectivity.
