Tesla Full Self Driving (FSD) info - interesting stuff!

[wilfred]

It will be trivial for people to troll autonomous cars and exploit their predictable behavior and I suspect a lot of people will make a game of it.

You could do that now!
You could put a brick in a paper bag and trick people into running over it. You could turn around signs to point the wrong way on dangerous corners. There are many ways to “troll” human drivers.

But guess what? People on the whole aren’t psychopaths and aren’t running around trying to cause car accidents by exploiting weaknesses in whatever way cars are currently driven.

A nice juicy bug in the LIDAR sensor ought to do it.

[james_s]

I just don't see it happening for a long time. It can be done with great difficulty in carefully controlled environments but out in the real world there are too many edge cases to consider. A friend of mine predicts that at some point one of these companies will get 99% of the way there, release a bunch of self driving cars to the market and within a short time there will be several big incidents that kill a bunch of people and that will be game over for a while. I tend to agree.

Regarding trolling, there is something inherently more appealing about messing with machines it seems, there is no shortage of examples of people hacking stuff and inconveniencing people just for giggles. I don't think there will be a lot of people maliciously trying to hurt people but I would certainly expect to see jammers that cause the cars to stop or people putting stickers on speed limit signs to make the cars slow down. It doesn't matter that most people don't do these things, it takes only a few who do. It's almost impossible to merge in many areas, I suspect the machines will not be aggressive enough and will frequently get stuck trying to merge onto busy freeways. Then there is all the accidental stuff like debris or spills in the road that obscure lane markings or snow, that will be a blast watching a bunch of self driving cars try to navigate a snow storm.

[SilverSolder]

Then there are the inevitable young guys that will find ways to hack their AI cars to snake its way through busy downtown traffic at breakneck speed, with millimeters of safety distances for passing and merging!  [Hmmm sounds kind of fun!]

Elon, if you are reading, this is how we need self driving cars to perform:

[wraper]

Then there are the inevitable young guys that will find ways to hack their AI cars to snake its way through busy downtown traffic at breakneck speed, with millimeters of safety distances for passing and merging!  [Hmmm sounds kind of fun!]

Elon, if you are reading, this is how we need self driving cars to perform:

And how they are supposed to hack it? They spent some serious effort to ensure that self driving processors won't run firmware not signed by Tesla. That's discussed in the video.

[Marco]

release a bunch of self driving cars to the market and within a short time there will be several big incidents that kill a bunch of people and that will be game over for a while. I tend to agree.

Tesla could crash at any moment now because of autopilot, that it has only killed drivers as of yet is a miracle ... first innocent is going to tank them, if it's a first responder in the US it could easily end up with Tesla management going to jail.

[Marco]

Training NN with a constant stream of real automatically annotated data is a pretty huge thing. nobody else has that. Like they said, it's the long tail of rare events that cause problems.  Look at the lady crossing the road carrying her bike that was killed. Having a NN that is trained well enough to deal with odd scenarios like that requires absolute torrents of real world data.

Pattern recognition only gets you so far, at some point a system has to start reasoning about and modelling the world ... a non recurrent neural network will never have enough training. We have no idea to train a recurrent network to be as good at problem solving as a dog, let alone have it drive a car.

[nctnico]

I think we are still at least 10 years away from fullly autonomous cars, possibly longer. Driving a car outside of carefully controlled conditions is just too complex of a task.

Driving a car is also a complex task for many people. However one of the problems to overcome is not just driving but also positioning. For driving in a city self driving cars need a much better way than GPS to get their position. Still there is also other technology on the way. The EU has standarised the method cars should use for vehicle to vechicle communication. For example: Volvo is going to release a system where cars warn eachother for the road conditions ahead. That is like looking around a corner. Seems very useful to me. On some highways there are relatively sharp bends in which you can't see what is ahead of you. I try to use the brake lights of other cars as an early warning system but that only goes so far.

[wilfred]

Elon, if you are reading, this is how we need self driving cars to perform:

On a racetrack perhaps. Why can't they develop a F1 car and enter it into the race? Win an F1 race, just one, and I might start to believe. It has to be easier than driving in traffic, for a machine.

[m98]

On a racetrack perhaps. Why can't they develop a F1 car and enter it into the race? Win an F1 race, just one, and I might start to believe. It has to be easier than driving in traffic, for a machine.

It would be relatively trivial, but won't be allowed for F1 and won't bring anyone enough money to do it. But there are some autonomous cars in Formula E:

[maginnovision]

They've sort of done autonomous race cars before in Fe. Last one I saw was drastically slower than a human but pretty good. I have made a scale one which isn't that fast but I know someone who made one that can go faster than either of us can drive.

[Rick Law]

I wish they would focus on making innovative high performance and practical EVs. I could not care less about self driving, the whole point of owning a personal car is that I get to drive it, when I don't feel like driving, I take the bus which is a much more efficient way of moving people.

I think we are still at least 10 years away from fullly autonomous cars, possibly longer. Driving a car outside of carefully controlled conditions is just too complex of a task. Computers are good at the mechanical aspect but way back when I took drivers ed I remember the instructor emphasizing that driving is primarily a social activity and computers still utterly fail when it comes to nuanced social interactions. It will be trivial for people to troll autonomous cars and exploit their predictable behavior and I suspect a lot of people will make a game of it.

I think there is some truth in driving being a social activity.  Understanding how people behave helps to avoid inter-human conflict.  Accidents at times are just such conflict that both want to be at that lane at that position at that time.

One particular day when I was teaching my kid how to drive, I saw something and told her: (distilled since I can't show how I was pointing with my hand) watch out - that yellow car on your right that just passed you, he is going to cut in front of the car ahead of you and then cut over again all the way to the far left lane.   About 15-30 seconds later, that yellow car did exactly that.  My kid was prepared and didn't slam into the car in front of her when it was braking hard to avoid the yellow car.

Based on the layout of cars around me, and based on how this yellow car driver behaved starting from how he was in my rear-view mirror, I knew exactly how he was going to act before his car shown any signs of doing it.  I think anyone with 10 years or so of driving experience would be able to do the same.  No different than most girls would know "that boy is going to hit on me" way before he tries to throw the first pass.

This types of road experience and behavior(s) of other drivers may be "handled" by self-driving cars in the future, but it is not there today.  It (in my opinion) is still only living in a world that small surprises will throw it into a big electro-pyschosis in its CPU brain.

As to "I wish they would focus on making innovative high performance and practical EVs."

While self-driving cars may be the future, for now, I think they need to focus on making a reliable car.

According to Consumers Report (which many in the USA who grew up before the internet would swear by) in October, Tesla-branded cars in general had dropped to third-worst in reliability, with only Cadillac and Volvo lower^[1].

Reference
[1] LA Times, Feb 2019 article: "Tesla Model 3 can no longer be recommended, says Consumer Reports"
^{https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-cr-unreliable-20190221-story.html}

[MT]

Very interesting video , but i wonder how the software/system will handle full snow/sand/rain storm. Perhaps just stop
as some human do and wait for better whether or let the human take over, not much neural network calculus needed for such a decision. Another issue are AU road trains, whenever a jumpy jumps in front of one the train just runs it over
else the whole train will tumble over so Tesla neural system needs to implement a "kill a jumpy" code. How will the system detect and avoid potholes from shadows that look exactly like potholes or black ice conditions from oil/water
etc and perfectly dry roads, or just combinations of all and everything, pothole+snows storm+moose+drunk driver.

[apis]

Self driving cars don't have to be better than human drivers in every way, only when it comes to safety, in other respects they just have to be "good enough". If the cars need operator intervention every now and then it wouldn't be a big problem, as long as it doesn't happens too often. As long as self driving cars are sufficiently convenient and cost efficient it is going to be the preferred option.

Public transportation with bus isn't necessarily more efficient than an on-demand taxi service. During rush hours when busses are full they probably are more efficient, but when the busses are mostly empty, a taxi service would be more efficient.

Self driving cars don't have to be able to drive in snow yet, it just means there are places and times where they can't operate currently, but there are enough places without snow that it isn't going to slow down progress.

[james_s]

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 driverless cars, people don't focus on that.

Personally I'd love to see a lot less distracting tech in cars, and if it were up to me I'd make manual gearbox proficiency mandatory to get a driver's license. I'm quite convinced that it makes people more engaged and attentive drivers and I loathe slushboxes to the point that I wish they had never been invented, they're silly devices for lazy people. The more assistive tech a car has, the more that tech becomes a crutch and enables people to do all manner of things except for driving the damn car. I ride the bus to work and I see it many times every day, people cruising down the highway playing with their smartphone, eating, putting on makeup, while blasting down the highway in a 4,000+ lb machine.

[tox3]

Amazing how involved Elon is in technology

Personally I'd love to see a lot less distracting tech in cars, and if it were up to me I'd make manual gearbox proficiency mandatory to get a driver's license. I'm quite convinced that it makes people more engaged and attentive drivers and I loathe slushboxes to the point that I wish they had never been invented, they're silly devices for lazy people. The more assistive tech a car has, the more that tech becomes a crutch and enables people to do all manner of things except for driving the damn car. I ride the bus to work and I see it many times every day, people cruising down the highway playing with their smartphone, eating, putting on makeup, while blasting down the highway in a 4,000+ lb machine.

In highway driving there is not a large difference between manual and automatic transmissions.
But people are really stupid and does all kinds of stupid stuff behind the wheel.

[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]

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.
...

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]

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.

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]

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.

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]

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.

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/

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.

[Rick Law]

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.

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/

I think it is a bigger problem for Tesla because:

(1) Outside of the aura of high tech and being an early EV, which was true when Tesla was new in the market, they have no other distinction.  Now every premium car maker are making EV's.  It is no longer so unique.  So they are completing in a crowded market that is getting even more crowded.

(2) USA is their largest market but USA government subsidies for them is entering phased out stage (they reached the numbers where phase out begins this year), they will not be as price competitive as they once were - and this gap will grow since phase out means subsidies per car will decrease.  In 2018, it was $7500/car; 1H2019 (first half 2019) will drop to $3750 and 2H2019 drops to $1875.  I think 2020 is zero.  This implies they will have further price/cost pressure and they don't have much room to squeeze when their quality is already so stressed.

In Denmark (source = zerohedge.com)^[1], in 2016 when subsidies phased out for EV, Tesla sales drop 94%!  So this year is a very bad year money-wise even if their operation is running smooth.  For them to need to spend money on fixing manufacturing quality problem(s) spells big danger; perhaps existential danger.

May be I would be proven wrong and they can handle the price-pressure with lower than average quality.  Their being third from bottom just doesn't give me a lot of confident...

Reference:
[1] zerohedge.com article June 2017:"It's Confirmed: Without Government Subsidies, Tesla Sales Implode"
"Nobody was hurt more than Tesla: the company, whose sales were skyrocketing at the time, lobbied against the move, with CEO Musk warning during a visit to Copenhagen that sales would be hit. It wasn't clear if the warning was targeting the government, the people of Denmark, or his own bank account and shareholders, but he was absolutely correct: in 2015 Tesla sold a total of 2,738 cars in Denmark. In 2016 the number dropped by 94% to just 176 units."
Full article here:
^{https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-11/its-confirmed-without-government-subsidies-tesla-sales-implode}

[SilverSolder]

The situation in Denmark is a little special though, they have crazy high car sales taxes there (something like 180%) so any discount really matters!   I recall seeing a Mercedes in Copenhagen with a personalised number plate:  "PAID 3X"

[nctnico]

@Rick Law: Tesla also receives money from other car manufacturers to compensate for their lack of selling electric vehicles. This source of income may also get reduced over time. If you own Tesla shares then now may be a good moment to sell.

[wraper]

@Rick Law: Tesla also receives money from other car manufacturers to compensate for their lack of selling electric vehicles. This source of income may also get reduced over time. If you own Tesla shares then now may be a good moment to sell.

Have you not heard about new factory in China?

[nctnico]

@Rick Law: Tesla also receives money from other car manufacturers to compensate for their lack of selling electric vehicles. This source of income may also get reduced over time. If you own Tesla shares then now may be a good moment to sell.

Have you not heard about new factory in China?

Where they will have to compete with even better and more producers of electric cars. Over here we have a few electric busses driving around in the city. Made in China.

I've read an interesting article in one of the bigger newspapers of the NL. China is becoming a real power where it comes to automotive engineering for both electric and self driving cars. They have the biggest uniform market for cars in the world.