60 Minutes: Hands off the Wheel

That Mercedes demo is impressive. Unless Tesla is ready to show off something comparable, I think they got enough mention for now.

 

Agree. If you haven't seen this, it's pretty cool:

 

There is so much hype and promises in autopilot from all manufacturers, that I really only care to see what is shipping.

 

The Merc demo is nice, but I've owned a 2015 S550, the Auto Drive is rubbish because of the nag (Hands on the wheel every 6 seconds).

I'm really itching to get Autopilot on my P85D, come onnnnn TSLA!

 

Hey they all have Falcon Wing Doors !! LOL

 

Looking forward to this after falling asleep and hitting a traffic tree this summer. Paid for the tech 10 months ago but as with TACC it may not be fool proof and will need close monitoring.

 

It seems to me that car-to-car communication as described by the second MB video would be a security nightmare. What stops a rogue system from passing a fake alert into the network?

 

It's one thing to demo your AP in a controlled environment under predefined conditions (as in the Merc video) and another thing entirely to put someone behind the wheel who isn't an employee and takes it out on the open road. These features aren't coming soon to Mercs this is a ways off. Tesla's tech on the other hand is essentially ready for rollout now.

This.

 

One of the most interesting things I heard was the Google employee, Chris Irmson quoted at 10:20 in the program

The reason this caught my attention it that it agrees with my thoughts after my experience driving a loaner Model S with TACC, specifically, that it was tricky to turn my brain on and off alternating with the cruise. I found myself thinking: Does the Tesla see that car coming into my lane? Is it slowing down soon enough? Do I stare at the road or can I relax a bit?

I see this as a serious problem since the responsibility and the liability for an accident might come into question.

I am very worried about Tesla being sued by someone who didn't take control in time. Even if Tesla prevails, the publicity would be bad.

 

I expect Tesla's tech to be much better, but MB is shipping on the S Class:

- Adaptive cruse control
- lane holding
- pedestrian recognition
- blind spot assist

So it's not like what we're going to see from Tesla is something never attempted elsewhere.

As for the 60 Minutes piece, they were talking about autonomous driving and the challenges behind delivering it. Mercedes is willing to show off a technology they believe will take years to deliver, and, BTW, it's cool. Watching the car deal with a 4-way stop impressed me! In any event, being able to see a demo is much more of a story than hearing Tesla say, "we have done better, but we can't show you."

 

The MB autonomous driving video is certainly highly edited and meant to show MB in a very favorable light. I doubt it works that well in real life. Google certainly has many many more miles of full autonomous driving miles on its fleet of cars and openly admits that properly handling 4-way stops is very hard for their software to do.