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Autopilot is already improving.

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Thanks Jennifer. Awesome article. Written by Musk's biographer no less.

TIL Ashlee Vance is a guy.

It stays true around the first bend. Near the end of the second, the Acura suddenly veers near an SUV to the right; I think of my soon-to-be-fatherless children; the car corrects itself. Amazed, I ask Hotz what it felt like the first time he got the car to work.

“Dude,” he says, “the first time it worked was this morning.”
 
Sometimes Elon strikes me as incredibly naive. According to the Bloomberg article, this is what he wrote in an email: “Frankly, I think you should just work at Tesla,” Musk wrote to Hotz in an e-mail. “I’m happy to work out a multimillion-dollar bonus with a longer time horizon that pays out as soon as we discontinue Mobileye.”.

The old adage, that I thought anyone over the age of, oh, 13 now, would know: NEVER write anything in an email that you don't want to see on the front page of the New York Times (in this case Bloomberg). Mobileye stock tanked yesterday as soon as the Bloomberg article hit the web, and today Tesla had to do damage control. Regardless of Tesla's intentions going forward, Mobileye is going to be much more reticent about working with Tesla from now on. It isn't as if Tesla if a big car company or anything. Mobileye could lose Tesla as a customer, and it would barely affect their earnings. On the flip side, Tesla absolutely needs Mobileye as a currently critical piece to their technology. In theory Tesla could move to a different vision processing platform, but that would be a huge undertaking.

I realize Elon was just trying to lure a talented software developer into working for Tesla, but you gotta be careful...
 
Yes, I think by sharing Elon's emails with Vance, this Hotz guy pretty much killed any chance of working with Tesla in the future. At least, that's my take.

I also kind of think Elon was baiting Hotz a little bit. He was basically saying "Sure, if you can displace MobileEye for real, we'll give you a huge paycheck"-- but that doesn't mean Elon actually thought he could do it. In fact, I think it was an attempt by Elon to tell him to go away, while preserving some optionality in case Hotz is able to come up with something amazing.

 
Yes, I think by sharing Elon's emails with Vance, this Hotz guy pretty much killed any chance of working with Tesla in the future. At least, that's my take.

I also kind of think Elon was baiting Hotz a little bit. He was basically saying "Sure, if you can displace MobileEye for real, we'll give you a huge paycheck"-- but that doesn't mean Elon actually thought he could do it. In fact, I think it was an attempt by Elon to tell him to go away, while preserving some optionality in case Hotz is able to come up with something amazing.
I also think that Hotz was already fed up with Elon, hence his action. Wish him well because we do appreciate talents and competition is good.
 
Hi all
Today while I was cruising on auto pilot I noticed two very interesting things.

When I first had a 24 hour loaner P85D, the auto pilot refused to function in intersections, resulting in the beep-beep-beep grab wheel immediately. Well today, I went thru 3-4 intersections and the car remained in auto pilot the entire time and seemed to follow the car in front of me. Not once did I have to turn it off in order to keep driving. Figured this as when the lanes resumed, it balanced itself out between the lanes (the car in front was favoring the left side traveling thru the intersection). I could also come to a stop, release the brake (stayed on hold), set the auto pilot/TACC and when the light turned green, the car had no problem going thru the intersection even though it could not see the lines because of the large truck in front of me.. Also when driving down the road, a car slowed down to take a right into a business and my car slowed down with it like normal, but then auto pilot decided to try to follow the car by turning the wheel right with the car in front, had to apply pressure to the wheel in order for it to stay straight.
I have a brand new 85D just 2 days old and I am on 2.9.4. About to install a dash cam this weekend, so when that is up and running, I will replicate and grab footage of it.
 
Also when driving down the road, a car slowed down to take a right into a business and my car slowed down with it like normal, but then auto pilot decided to try to follow the car by turning the wheel right with the car in front, had to apply pressure to the wheel in order for it to stay straight.

It sounds like perhaps you weren't in Auto Steer Beta mode, but rather the new "Follow the Leader" mode. :)

Seriously, though, we know that if the Auto Steer software is having any issues seeing the lines, it will use the target car as a guide, so if you're on a highway, and the target car is taking an exit, your car may veer towards the exit as well, but to actually begin to turn off the road, into a business is a bit of a stretch. Really not sure what the software was attempting to do there!
 
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I believe the target car mode only works up to 18MPH. You can tell when in that mode because the car is in blue.

It sounds like perhaps you weren't in Auto Steer Beta mode, but rather the new "Follow the Leader" mode. :)

Seriously, though, we know that if the Auto Steer software is having any issues seeing the lines, it will use the target car as a guide, so if you're on a highway, and the target care is taking an exit, your car may veer towards the exit as well, but to actually begin to turn off the road, into a business is a bit of a stretch. Really not sure what the software was attempting to do there!
 
Via: Firmware 7.1 - Page 2

Image: http://i.imgur.com/mlm6yX7.png
mlm6yX7.png


Image: http://i.imgur.com/sBDQn1a.jpg
sBDQn1a.jpg


Image: http://i.imgur.com/UcthEe0.png
UcthEe0.png
 
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Is it a good thing it's improving so fast? I posted before that one day driving a car will be like riding a horse. It will be done for enjoyment only but not for transportation and it won't be allowed on public roads. Is that a good thing? I will have to get up every morning and have my car drive me to and from work (and all places in between)... so there goes one of my enjoyments in life. But it gets much worse:

I was listening to Howard Stern and Dr. Angus was his guest. He said that driving decreases the risk of dementia. He also said that if you just drive home a different way from work you significantly stimulate your brain and that helps to ward off dementia.

Dr. Angus:

"We evolved as humans... going and hunting and gathering and making our way back to the village, being able to do a physical activity with pattern recognition is what we were selected for and driving is that. In fact, if you choose a different route home from work every day you stimulate your brain and make new connections... If you don't use it, you lose it and this is a way to increase connections... That's why self-driving cars I don't think are going to be successful. I think driving is ingrained in us. It's good. Yes, if you've had too much to drink, or are stuck in traffic, you turn on auto driving but driving is good for us, it helps our brain - we don't want to become robots."

Howard:

"But look... one of the leading causes of death are accidents on the road and that would probably eliminate 98% of the accidents if we had cars that could self-drive."

Dr. Angus:

"Yeah, certainly when you're not in the condition to drive, when you're distracted, which is a lot of the causes of accidents you should definitely be on self-driving mode but most of the time the chance of an accident is infinitesimally small for an individual."

I looked into this further and Dr. Angus' position is backed up by a study that was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society on Jan. 19.

I also found this article on the subject:

Driving Car Regularly Cuts Dementia Risk, Study Shows : LIFE : Tech Times

That's it, I'm not upgrading for auto-pilot! ;)
 
Autopilot Warning

Caution. Second time in 2 weeks: Autopilot was engaged, car slows down to stop behind a stopped car and then suddenly accelerates! Had to slam brakes on to avoid a collision. ABS activated. (Did not wait for Emergency Braking to kick-in.) Tesla is working the issue. Will advise . . .
 
Caution. Second time in 2 weeks: Autopilot was engaged, car slows down to stop behind a stopped car and then suddenly accelerates! Had to slam brakes on to avoid a collision. ABS activated. (Did not wait for Emergency Braking to kick-in.) Tesla is working the issue. Will advise . . .

I've been looking for this and still haven't experienced it.

I wonder if on some cars the car radar loses the lock on the car in front and then starts accelerating? Curious thing is that when it does accelerate, it does so usually pretty slowly. What do you mean by "suddenly accelerates"? Do you mean it accelerates without warning, or that it literally accelerates more quickly than it does when autopilot is behaving normally?
 
I've been looking for this and still haven't experienced it.

I wonder if on some cars the car radar loses the lock on the car in front and then starts accelerating? Curious thing is that when it does accelerate, it does so usually pretty slowly. What do you mean by "suddenly accelerates"? Do you mean it accelerates without warning, or that it literally accelerates more quickly than it does when autopilot is behaving normally?

This has happened to me a couple of times too. My theory is exactly what you suggested. Car loses lock on car in front but in my case there was no reason it should have braked so hard. The acceleration felt like normal TACC acceleration.
 
I've been looking for this and still haven't experienced it.

I wonder if on some cars the car radar loses the lock on the car in front and then starts accelerating? Curious thing is that when it does accelerate, it does so usually pretty slowly. What do you mean by "suddenly accelerates"? Do you mean it accelerates without warning, or that it literally accelerates more quickly than it does when autopilot is behaving normally?

I was going 45 MPH on autopilot when my car started slowing when it detected a stopped car in front of me. At about 20 MPH and about 3 car-lengths from stopped car, Model S suddenly stopped braking and suddenly started to try to accelerate back up to 45 MPH as if the stopped car was not there. It felt very abrupt . . . My passenger screamed. Not fun!