General > General Technical Chat
Tesla Full Self Driving (FSD) info - interesting stuff!
<< < (9/41) > >>
CatalinaWOW:
Lots of hubris here.  I learned on a manual transmission, and have owned several over the years.  But I far prefer automatic.  Two reasons.  First, I drive a car to get somewhere, not for the driving experience.  Having to sort around the gears all the time is a nuisance I can do without.  Particularly in big city rush hour traffic.  The second reason is just as important, though few will admit it.  I will admit that an expertly driven manual transmission can perform better than almost all, if not all automatic transmissions.  But I am not an expert, in spite of thousands of hours behind the wheel.  The few situations where I can do something better than the automatic are far outweighed by the many where the automatic outperforms me.  Particularly in difficult but not often encountered situations.  Like starting from a standing stop up a steep hill in heavy traffic.  Or towing a boat up a ramp.  (The latter two were particularly fun in a Mazda RX-3 with manual transmission.  No low RPM torque to speak of.  Wonderful car otherwise.)

Totally different area of discussion.  I agree that at least in the short term the solution for automatic cars in bad driving conditions will be to stop safely.  Unfortunately they will probably be prone to the same problem as humans who frequently misjudge their capability to drive in the current conditions.  I am a fairly good bad weather driver and cannot count the number of times I have seen folks spin out, slide off roads or other things due to their over estimation of their capabilities.  And I have a couple of instances where good fortune was all that save me from the same fate.
Rick Law:

--- Quote from: james_s on April 26, 2019, 06:19:50 am ---No it really is a big, BIG problem if they need human intervention EVER. It is a well documented fact that when something rarely requires our full attention the brain quickly finds other things to focus on and then when something does happen we have completely lost situational awareness.
...

--- End quote ---

I've to disagree with James_S here.  Ready or not, people will use it to excess anyway.  Dated even before "adaptive cruse control" hit the market, most of us who drive to work daily would have seen others driving while with "over-the-top" distractions - reading while driving, shaving while driving, putting on eye makeup while driving... you name it...  I have seen a lady knitting while driving...  A half-baked FSD would probably be safer than reading while driving.  As to whether it is more beneficial to society for those drivers to receive a Darwin Award sooner rather than later is another discussion.

As to Tesla, whether FSD is a big deal or not should not be a Tesla's worry -- The moment Consumers Report ranked the Tesla brand as third worst in reliability on the market (reference in my last reply = reply35 in this thread), their problem should no longer be FSD.  Started that moment, their problem should be reliability.  For them to worry about FSD right now is like worrying about the cookie crumbs on the floor while the living room is on fire.
apis:

--- Quote from: james_s on April 26, 2019, 06:19:50 am ---No it really is a big, BIG problem if they need human intervention EVER. It is a well documented fact that when something rarely requires our full attention the brain quickly finds other things to focus on and then when something does happen we have completely lost situational awareness. This is the reason that they have technology in trains that requires the operator to take some action on a regular basis to make sure they have not zoned out. A self driving car absolutely must be able to deal with all sorts of edge cases because things happen. Debris on the road, spills, unpredictable or erratic behavior by other drivers, confusing signs, a single incident where one of these cars gets confused and veers off the road into a crowd of pedestrians could easily put the company out of business under the weight of lawsuits and bad publicity. It doesn't matter if ultimately fewer total people are killed by the driver less cars, people don't focus on that.
--- End quote ---
You are right that there are many things the cars must be able to handle without operator intervention, and as I said, especially safety related issues. But if in one out of a thousand rides the cars stop at a blocked road and can't figure out a new route to the destination it's not a big problem. It would require the passenger to press a "call operator" button (or the car will do it automatically) to have someone manually reroute the car causing a delay of maybe 5-15 min. When it comes to safety I think people will expect self driving cars to be much safer than human drivers, if they regularly mow down pedestrians that will definitely be a show stopper. But I'm also convinced they have the potential to be much safer than human drivers and, unlike Tesla, Waymo have very impressive safety statistics (they are miles ahead of anyone else in the self driving cars race and they are already taking passengers in Phoenix I've read).
thm_w:

--- Quote from: Rick Law on April 26, 2019, 09:22:48 pm ---As to Tesla, whether FSD is a big deal or not should not be a Tesla's worry -- The moment Consumers Report ranked the Tesla brand as third worst in reliability on the market (reference in my last reply = reply35 in this thread), their problem should no longer be FSD.  Started that moment, their problem should be reliability.  For them to worry about FSD right now is like worrying about the cookie crumbs on the floor while the living room is on fire.

--- End quote ---

If anyone is wondering: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/24/tesla-reliability-slips-to-third-worst-in-us-consumer-reports-says.html

BMW has had historically bad reliability, and the highest maintenance costs, and yet they do well. Probably because its a luxury/status brand, and people are willing to put up with it. Tesla is in a similar situation now, so I don't see it being as big of a deal as you do.

https://clark.com/cars/most-and-least-expensive-cars-maintain-repair/
maginnovision:

--- Quote from: thm_w on April 26, 2019, 10:57:08 pm ---
--- Quote from: Rick Law on April 26, 2019, 09:22:48 pm ---As to Tesla, whether FSD is a big deal or not should not be a Tesla's worry -- The moment Consumers Report ranked the Tesla brand as third worst in reliability on the market (reference in my last reply = reply35 in this thread), their problem should no longer be FSD.  Started that moment, their problem should be reliability.  For them to worry about FSD right now is like worrying about the cookie crumbs on the floor while the living room is on fire.

--- End quote ---

If anyone is wondering: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/24/tesla-reliability-slips-to-third-worst-in-us-consumer-reports-says.html

BMW has had historically bad reliability, and the highest maintenance costs, and yet they do well. Probably because its a luxury/status brand, and people are willing to put up with it. Tesla is in a similar situation now, so I don't see it being as big of a deal as you do.

https://clark.com/cars/most-and-least-expensive-cars-maintain-repair/

--- End quote ---

I think the BMW thing is dependent on some things. BMW NA gives you 4 years maintenance for new cars, you can pay for 6 years. If you don't keep the car longer than that you never pay maintenance except tires. With older vehicles customers usually go somewhere else and use much cheaper aftermarket parts. I'm also not sure reliability is bad for BMW. Most cars have less than 1 or 2 repairs in a few years and the rest is maintenance. The last gen n63 had a few issues same as the n54 but even then they usually never required more than an extra 1 or 2(Extra set of injectors, maybe a recall or carbon cleaning) repairs depending on how the customer used the vehicle. Typically covered under warranty or goodwill repairs. I don't have worldwide numbers but the ones from one of the biggest dealers in the USA says they aren't bad at all.
Navigation
Message Index
Next page
Previous page
There was an error while thanking
Thanking...

Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod