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Tesla Cybertruck
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nctnico:

--- Quote from: Siwastaja on December 12, 2023, 01:03:26 pm ---It has been many decades with very little fresh innovation in automotive.

--- End quote ---
True, but then again: what can you actually innovate where it comes to cars? Aerodynamics & safety have a single optimum shape so all cars look alike nowadays. On top of that, people gotten afraid of colors so all cars are black, grey or white. Sure, new things like touchscreens have been tried but failed. Radios got rotating knobs for the volume control back after up/down buttons where the 'hype du jour' for a few years in the early 2000s. At some point a product is as good as it gets. After all, what can you improve on a hammer?
SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: vk6zgo on December 17, 2023, 11:40:31 pm ---
--- Quote from: Psi on December 17, 2023, 12:21:32 pm ---Hm.. A "recall" that's just an OTA update to add extra annoyances to the cars interface just to account for a small percentage of the population that's too stupid to use autopilot correctly without it.

Can't say I agree with this nanny state BS.

If a person cannot understand the simple concept that they are fully responsible for everything the car does while on autopilot then they probably shouldn't be on the road in the first place.

--- End quote ---
A great step forward would be not to call it "autopilot"!

--- End quote ---

Well, "autopilot" may sound like it means "autonomous" for typical car drivers, but the word has been used in the transportation industry in other types of vehicles for a long time with not much ambiguity. It never meant that the pilot was not responsible and that the autopilot could be left on unattended. So the same should be for cars. But of course, marketing doesn't like that.

It should just be an extension of what's been around for several decades already, like speed regulators/"cruise control". Problem being that the more is automated, and the less the driver will be sollicited, so the less they'll be alert. The reason it works in professional transportation is that pilots are doing their job, they are not just "consumers" of a vehicle. Also, the fact they are rarely alone helps - there are always colleagues around if one person fails.
Siwastaja:

--- Quote from: vk6zgo on December 17, 2023, 11:40:31 pm ---A great step forward would be not to call it "autopilot"!

--- End quote ---

I think the term is fine. Tesla's system is already more capable, relatively speaking, than what is classically meant by an "autopilot". (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot if unfamiliar with the term.) However, Tesla has clearly failed to communicate (quite obviously on purpose) what they have is not autonomous driving or even a prototype of it; "unofficially" overselling the feature is the problem, not the name which is really the most honest part of it IMHO.


--- Quote from: nctnico on December 17, 2023, 11:57:15 pm ---True, but then again: what can you actually innovate where it comes to cars? Aerodynamics & safety have a single optimum shape so all cars look alike nowadays. On top of that, people gotten afraid of colors so all cars are black, grey or white. Sure, new things like touchscreens have been tried but failed. Radios got rotating knobs for the volume control back after up/down buttons where the 'hype du jour' for a few years in the early 2000s. At some point a product is as good as it gets. After all, what can you improve on a hammer?

--- End quote ---

There is more than a single dimension "objectively good" - "objectively bad". Cars appeal to emotions, and just doing something differently enough has value in itself. Sure, it's not for the majority, and that's fine. It's good to have choices. Another point is, thinking that we are at an optimum is prone to go wrong. Experimentation is needed to see what happens.

Optimizations often get stuck in local minimum we don't understand being local, unless we do random and sometimes weird perturbations. For example: despite being micro-optimized for aerodynamics, modern cars have worse aerodynamics than 20 years ago. And I don't mean the drag coefficient, that's only half of the equation; it has been optimized from decent to even better during last 30 years. But frontal area is the other half and it has been increasing with the SUV bullshit. Even non-SUVs have been turning into half-SUVs. And as always, I like having options, so SUVs, too, but I don't like every car being SUV-ish. Tesla Model3 is a fresh exception to this trend, which is also why it gets so excellent energy consumption numbers.
Psi:

--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on December 18, 2023, 12:10:05 am ---It never meant that the pilot was not responsible and that the autopilot could be left on unattended.

--- End quote ---

I hate to say it, but the movie 'Airplane' is probably to blame for setting up an incorrect definition for the word autopilot long ago. Some people obviously took it seriously  :-DD
vk6zgo:

--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on December 18, 2023, 12:10:05 am ---
--- Quote from: vk6zgo on December 17, 2023, 11:40:31 pm ---
--- Quote from: Psi on December 17, 2023, 12:21:32 pm ---Hm.. A "recall" that's just an OTA update to add extra annoyances to the cars interface just to account for a small percentage of the population that's too stupid to use autopilot correctly without it.

Can't say I agree with this nanny state BS.

If a person cannot understand the simple concept that they are fully responsible for everything the car does while on autopilot then they probably shouldn't be on the road in the first place.

--- End quote ---
A great step forward would be not to call it "autopilot"!

--- End quote ---

Well, "autopilot" may sound like it means "autonomous" for typical car drivers, but the word has been used in the transportation industry in other types of vehicles for a long time with not much ambiguity. It never meant that the pilot was not responsible and that the autopilot could be left on unattended. So the same should be for cars. But of course, marketing doesn't like that.

It should just be an extension of what's been around for several decades already, like speed regulators/"cruise control". Problem being that the more is automated, and the less the driver will be sollicited, so the less they'll be alert. The reason it works in professional transportation is that pilots are doing their job, they are not just "consumers" of a vehicle. Also, the fact they are rarely alone helps - there are always colleagues around if one person fails.

--- End quote ---

The original autopilots used of things like DC3s were quite limited, but modern ones are quite a lot more capable.
Also, in the public mind, there is probably a lot of blurring between them & Automatic Landing Systems & the like.
A more descriptive name for what the Tesla ones do (& is used by other manufacturers) is "Driver Assist".
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