I was equating the significance of the disengagement, not the whole of the driving function.
No, but they do have the option, even for non-critical issues, to park and wait for instructions. Seems to me that is a major violation of the car doing all the driving.
As anyone who’s experienced it can you, phantom braking is a real problem.
I’m sure it is. I’m equally sure that running into a truck is worse. That’s not to belittle the criticism, just to note that there are ways that software can be designed to achieve a particular goal, even if it receives conflicting instructions from difference sources. You just have to prioritize which, or what result is more important.
If you like. Again, my point is not that Waymo’s current system meets some platonic ideal standard for what a “car doing all the driving” might be. Just that Tesla needs to get to at least what Waymo’s doing in order to be in a position to flip the proverbial switch, and let people start using FSD as a Level 4 or 5 system rather than just an ADAS system.
(I think it likely that a Tesla robotaxi network would also have to have remote operators available, FWIW).
You can run a Level 4 or 5 system with some degree of interventions, so long as the interventions are not critical interventions - at least from a bare minimum safety/regulatory level. Whether it’s economical to do so is another matter, depending on the intervention rate. But you could have as many non-critical interventions as you can afford to staff and your customers will put up with, and still get away with running that system.
What you can’t do is run a Level 4 or 5 system and have critical interventions at a rate more frequent than one per several hundred thousand miles. And because that frequency rate is so low, you can have a Level 2 system (like FSD) that is both:
- At times capable of handling trips (even long trips) without any interventions at all; and
- Is very, very, very far away from being able to operate as a driverless system.
As a Level 2 system improved, we would expect that people would be able to post videos of their cars driving to the airport without intervention even while that system was still very far away from the point of being safe for actual autonomy. So those videos don’t provide any useful indication of how close FSD is to being an autonomous system.
This is not about comparing some “official score” or some such between Waymo and Tesla in California reported data or such thing. Those comparisons won’t be useful, because Tesla hasn’t even applied for permission for a driverless system yet, much less implemented one. It’s just pointing out that Tesla will need to get up to something close to Waymo’s volume of trips without critical interventions before they can activate any kind of driverless network, and there’s nothing out there that indicates they’re anywhere close to that right yet.
At the same time, I think it is important to recognize the significant qualifications on the Waymo implementation of “the car does the driving” and not to think “well, Waymo is doing level 4, so what Tesla is doing must be crap”.
It may well be that all these systems will require a “call home” function to get past the last bit.
Of course. And the limitations on Waymo are far more significant than just “calling home” now and then. They are heavily geofenced and speed limited, at least for now.
But let’s also not think that, “Well, a Tesla can drive me to the airport without my intervening, so what Tesla is doing must be close to solving autonomy.” There’s so much space between being able to make some trips without a safety intervention and being able to make enough trips without a safety intervention to operate an autonomous system. Enough so that doing the first really doesn’t indicate that you’re anywhere close to doing the second.
Here is my anecdotal phantom breaking story. For years people were talking about and I never ever had it happen to me in ~40K miles. Then last summer I took a 3600 mile trip from CA to Glacier NP and back. I had it happen to me a dozen times or so. Almost every time it was high speed driving (around 65 - 80ish) on an Interstate usually going east or west in bright sun. I could usually see a water mirage in the distance, then Bam a slow down to 50 or 60 mph.
At first I overrode it with the pedal since I knew there wasn’t any obstacle. But a few times, with no traffic, I let it run its course and after a few seconds it just ignored it and continued on again.
I reported several of these in detail to Tesla.
It hasn’t ever happened again…but then I haven’t driven anywhere with those same conditions again either.
I searched again in Tesla forums to see if others had similar experience, but found no definitive info
Mike
Having recently retired after a multi-decade career in software, I’m fully aware of what software can do.
That said, the answer isn’t to have phantom braking instead of not hitting trucks, it’s not doing either. And that may or may not mean including LiDAR when you already have multiple cameras and multiple compute chips on-board.
2 Likes
[ Hawkwin](/u/Hawkwin)Fanbois can stay irrational for longer than you can stay solvent. I’d not advise it.
So I wrote this in August of last year, and Tesla was at about $220, plus or minus (the Fool only dates the post as “August”)
So Hawkwin’s advise was good, Tesla is now about $300. That said, when the price hit $335 I couldn’t help myself, and yes, I shorted Tesla. That was about two weeks ago, and while it’s a laffer in size, I couldn’t help myself. Then I watched as the price bounced upwards for several days and thought about dumping it (especially after the State Department announced it was buying a bunch of “bulletproof” cyber trucks - an insignificant number really, but a demonstration of what the Lyin’ King might be able to do with such control of the government) but I held on.
For a couple days now I’m positive. Might all fade away, but the thesis is: really really crappy sales report coming up (prediction, obviously) with Europe, China, and California all cratering. Can it be made up somewhere? Don’t see how. Cybertruck demand slowing markedly, prices being lowered. Lots more competition coming on-line, from VW to Toyota, Anti-EV rhetoric coming from the White House, liberals aghast, conservatives unlikely to play savior for the industry.
On the other side, Tesla has new models coming out, so maybe that’s something. And rah rah rah, AI, robocabs, and all the rest that’s been promised for lo these many years. I guess I’m from Missouri, now: Show Me.
Anyway, just thought I’d put an addendum here: I’m short. Hee hee.
5 Likes