Agreed. I'd go further though and say the semi-autonomous feature itself is fundamentally flawed. It's a mishmash of what the car will do and what the human is expected to do; the whole while making the human responsible even if the car fails in doing its part.
So, I don't buy into their disclaiming of responsibility if the car fails in what it is doing autonomously.
That is, it's one thing if a safety measure fails to engage (for instance, the car fails to brake to avoid an accident while still under the human's control). However, it's a different matter when the car offers to actively perform a function in lieu of the human, then fails in properly performing it.
By the mere existence and offer of the function, the company is essentially making a claim as to the vehicle's fitness for that function and asking the human to trust that claim by assigning control to the vehicle. No amount of verbiage that tries to assign responsibility back to the human can offset the fact that the vehicle was under its own control when it failed.
Tesla's autopilot is functionally identical to a boat or plane autopilot. If a pilot or skipper relied upon autopilot as a full self driving system they would most likely be dead before the end of their trip.
Something like 92% of Americans don't own a boat, let alone one fancy enough to have an autopilot. 99.9% of Americans don't own a plane. As such, most Americans have no exposure to an autopilot and its functionality beyond perhaps having heard the name.
Tesla themselves muddle the waters. On https://www.tesla.com/autopilot, it states "All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver."
Further down, it talks about "Full Self-Driving Capability", "All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go.", "The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat.", etc.
It's not shocking folks have gotten the impression it's a self-driving feature instead of a fancy cruise control.
Yes exactly, they don't clarify at all that the full driving capability is after they finish the hardware. and they have taken forever. I'm glad I have a hw1 tesla. it works, not full automation but a lot of good features like tacc
Full self-driving is a vaporware feature separate from the current Autopilot. It's confusing that they would advertise a feature that doesn't exist, but it's not like they're claiming Autopilot works that way. More importantly, the page where you configure your car explains the distinction very clearly (and charges extra for full self-driving, even though it doesn't exist!), so I doubt anyone has actually bought a Tesla thinking that Autopilot was full self-driving.
"Tesla’s Enhanced Autopilot software has begun rolling out and features will continue to be introduced as validation is completed, subject to regulatory approval. "
"Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction. It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available, as this is highly dependent on local regulatory approval."
The latter paragraph is very vaguely worded and certainly not very clear that it is non existent as yet.
It is complete vaporware. Their radar sensors depend on a hokey whitelist database to avoid triggering false positives on "problematic" static structures like billboards and overpasses. Tesla deserves to be sued into the ground for daring to make such audacious claims. It is complete lunacy to believe that this is acceptable for autonomous driving in a dynamic real world environment.
actually tesla's ability to deal with dynamism (even without lidar) is something that puts them ahead of most cars. the famous waymo required pre-mapped roads, it didn't work on changes. They even had lidar and they had that restriction. I don't know if they've relaxed it since then.
Yes, I said in the comment you're replying to that Tesla's advertising for that nonexistent feature was confusing. I'm not sure why you're repeating it back to me.
But at any rate, this thread isn't about whether it's clear that the Full Self-Driving software is vaporware. The question is whether people are buying Teslas under the misunderstanding that regular Autopilot is the same thing as Full Self-Driving.
That you're spending so much time in fiction that you are losing a grip on reality. There's also teleportation, flying broomsticks and miles-long star dreadnoughts in those stories; surely you don't expect those as well?
Does it even have to be about the “average” person? What percentage of the population has ever been exposed to real autopilot systems? For all the rest, sci-fi autopilot is the only reference point. A person doesn’t have to be particularly ignorant not to be exposed to these things; I’d tentatively posit most people growing up in an urban center have never been behind the console of a plane or a boat.
I agree. I think by average I was referring to what you said - most people have never controlled planes or boats. Perhaps “ordinary” would have been clearer.
I do agree that Tesla seems to be doing their utmost to say something akin to "it could be autonomous, if if if" - and that an average consumer could read that as "it is autonomous, full stop."
I do agree that Tesla seems to be doing their utmost to say something akin to "it could be autonomous, if if if"
They are not doing their utmost. They're doing the minimum necessary to avoid getting sued. Their sales people and marketing material are pushing autonomous hard, and being very quiet about the limitations. If you're not following the tech news on these issues and only going by what the sales guy at the dealership told you, then the confusion is very reasonable.
Tesla's autopilot function is horribly named and not at all identical to plane autopilot.
Modern autopilots are actually fully capable of handling takeoff, flight, and landing without interaction from the pilot. However, pilots continue to handle takeoff and landing procedures to maintain skills in those areas as generally an autopilot failure during those times would not be recoverable.
> Modern autopilots are actually fully capable of handling takeoff, flight, and landing without interaction from the pilot.
No they're not. The pilot needs to initiate the sequences first, and good luck when something unexpected happens - a Tesla (or any truck/car with auto-distance-control) will brake when a car changes lanes right in front of it, a plane will blare sirens (okay, to be fully correct: it will tell the pilot a preferred course of action to avoid a collision) if another plane comes too close for comfort but not do any evasive action on its own.
Even in a perfectly ordinary flight there are always the ATCs to serve as master controllers for all airplanes... something you also have in railways, but not at all on the road. On the road everyone is on his own.
Modern airplanes are pretty good at avoiding head-on collisions though - so good, that pilots are trained not to override the planes judgement, and just let it communicate with the other plane and make the best calls as to whether to climb or dive...
Capable of handling _each_ of the functions (NOT switching between the modes - "sit on tarmac, punch in destination, go take a nap"; plus I'm not entirely sure if the feature you describe as autotakeoff even exists outside Hollywood), exclusively on the happy path with strict minima, with pilots required to take over at once in case of any irregularity. Highly convenient, but not a self-flying miracle.
Nope. There are features such as thrust assymetry compensation, and you could technically engage the autopilot as low as 200 ft AGL, but I maintain that there is no automatic takeoff available on commercial aircraft (there's something related on catapult-launched fighter jets, but that's quite another world).
If you're claiming a feature exists "in the Dreamliner and the Airbus 380...over a decade" - well, [citation-needed], then: all the sources that I've managed to find are unanimous that it doesn't, e.g. http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation-myths/
To quote the pilot above:
"That fantasy insists on outpacing reality is perhaps symptomatic of our infatuation with technology, and the belief that we can compute our way out of every dilemma or complication."
Some modern airports REQUIRE pilots to use auto landing if their plane supports it. I know because I have a friend who is a commercial pilot and they don't like flying those routes because it is boring. Most airports let the pilots fly manually if they want.
Possible. What I'm saying is "the plane can do many things, but 1. won't switch modes e.g. from cruise to autoland, and 2. even so, it's just a different way of controlling the plane, it does not fly itself."
True. Although, that ignores the fact that even hobbyist pilots and skippers tend to have far more training and discipline than the average motorist. The name might be accurate, but the self awareness of the name is terrible.
Before they were in cars, autopilots in planes were there to keep the plane on the approximate course, in good conditions, with the pilot expected to supervise the operation and take over at immediate notice. Difference?
Yes, almost no Americans are pilots, and few own boats. The name seems deliberately misleading to most people, and in a safety-critical application no less.
