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BBC Article - Tesla Whistleblower

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#21
starharbour said:
I think you need to take your car back to Tesla if that's the case. I've had my car a year now and whilst i've had the occasional phantom brake, its usually very light and quickly rectified by pressing the accelerator and over riding. If you're getting "slamming" at 70mph i think you have a fault on your car or you're doing something weird as that's not normal bevhaviour and i certainly have never experienced a "slamming" as you describe.
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I’ve stated previously Tesla came to my car a few week ago. The first thing the engineer said before he did any tests on my car was” I know this is not going to be an issue with your car. It’s a software issue. My auto pilot is so bad I never use it anymore. It was broken by a software update and needs to be fixed by a software update”.

He proceeded to do the tests and indeed there was nothing wrong with the vehicle.

I’ve had my car for nearly 4 years and the issue was caused when musk announced transition to vision-only, radar was removed from the vehicle and then the cameras had a “quality” software update a few weeks ago. That’s when it really fell off a cliff overnight.
 
#22
Ok, well I can't speak for your experience but what I am saying is I also have a tesla with none of the issues you experience, and I imagine most on this forum will agree with me. If its the same software then its most likely something with your car that's causing it, either that, or you're doing something yourself to cause the issue.

Tesla Autopilot has been a godsend for me. I find it brilliant. Its not perfect and I do have to intervene sometimes, but its FAR safer than manual driving and its truly revolutionsed driving for the better. I am far safer and feel far more refreshed as a result of having it.
 
#24
I might do! I think it depends what you ask but I would be gobsmacked if people don't agree that Tesla Autopilot is a very useful tool that people value. There's no way Tesla would be as successful as they are without having a good autopilot product. Its a main driver for people purchasing the vehicles. If people didn't like it, they wouldn't buy Teslas to the same degree
 
#25
I can't see why people have a particular problem with the article. we all know the software is far from perfect, that anyone with a modicom of statistics knowledge recognises Tesla's "we go 5x as far between accidents" is playing on peoples numerical ignorance as its not comparing apples with apples, and if Tesla were primarily interested in safety, why would they even let the autopilot we use be activated in urban situations when the manual says it shouldn't be used there? Thats not being liberal. thats playing with peoples safety.

So I kind of feel he's articulating what we all know, which doesn't make it newsworthy as such, maybe the BBC are trying to make more out of it than they should. Lets face it, we've recent threads on here talking about things getting worse, that Tesla Vision is a joke etc,

As for whether we all agree or all don't agree - surely those that don't appear to have issues themselves must recognise that for the experience to be so varied across users who are supposed to be driving near identical hardware and software is an issue in itself. When FSD comes around I want predictability as much as performance,, and we don't seem to have that before we start looking at the specifics.
 
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#26
starharbour said:
Ok, well I can't speak for your experience but what I am saying is I also have a tesla with none of the issues you experience, and I imagine most on this forum will agree with me. If its the same software then its most likely something with your car that's causing it, either that, or you're doing something yourself to cause the issue.
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As a matter of interest what are you driving?

I’m a 3 year old 3P

How can the way I’m driving cause the autopilot issues I am having? The car is driving itself on the motorway at 70mph. It passes a vehicle (or a vehicle passes me) at a different speed and my car decides to either slow down or slam on the anchors. How can that be the way I am driving?

Have you searched these forums? There are thousands of comments about exactly this issue.

I’m glad your car works as intended for you but please remember it may not be anybody else fault apart from Tesla’s for those of us that have cars with autopilot that currently drives like sh1t.

As finally, is it the same software as you state or is it a variation on the same software? Is 2023.44.1 on a 3 year old 3P with Radar and USS the same software as a Y purchased yesterday or a Y from last year. We will never know. Is my front camera exactly the same as yours? There are so many permutations that can cause this.

Some days my autopilot is good. Most it’s bad. A year ago it was fine. 2 years ago it was even better. The only thing that has changed is the software.
 
#27
Fair enough. I take your point. I can't explain your degraded experience but i think its fair to say you have more experience than me. I've only had a my car a year so i can't say its got worse over the years as its been pretty consistent since i got it.

I drive a 2021 M3 SR+ right now, soon to be 2024 M3 LR

I hope your experience improves, mine remains very good in general.
 
#28
starharbour said:
Fair enough. I take your point. I can't explain your degraded experience but i think its fair to say you have more experience than me. I've only had a my car a year so i can't say its got worse over the years as its been pretty consistent since i got it.

I drive a 2021 M3 SR+ right now, soon to be 2024 M3 LR

I hope your experience improves, mine remains very good in general.
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My PCP runs out in March and I’ll probably replace it with a new 3 Highland so it’s not all bad. I’m just disappointed that my car’s automatics are considerably worse now than when purchased. I have real concerns about the belief in vision-only.
 
#30
Pagemakers said:
As a matter of interest what are you driving?

I’m a 3 year old 3P

How can the way I’m driving cause the autopilot issues I am having? The car is driving itself on the motorway at 70mph. It passes a vehicle (or a vehicle passes me) at a different speed and my car decides to either slow down or slam on the anchors. How can that be the way I am driving?

Have you searched these forums? There are thousands of comments about exactly this issue.

I’m glad your car works as intended for you but please remember it may not be anybody else fault apart from Tesla’s for those of us that have cars with autopilot that currently drives like sh1t.

As finally, is it the same software as you state or is it a variation on the same software? Is 2023.44.1 on a 3 year old 3P with Radar and USS the same software as a Y purchased yesterday or a Y from last year. We will never know. Is my front camera exactly the same as yours? There are so many permutations that can cause this.

Some days my autopilot is good. Most it’s bad. A year ago it was fine. 2 years ago it was even better. The only thing that has changed is the software.
Click to expand...
It seems to me most of the people with issues are driving older cars. Who knows what changes and upgrades Tesla have made over the years.
Personally I changed from a 2019 car to a late 2022 car.
To me Autopilot ( which I don't use that much to be fair) seems at least as good in the 2023 car as it was in the 2019 car with Radar.
Less phantom braking now than the 2019 car back in early 2022 I would say. but i am a very small sample size.

What we really need is someone like Richard Symons who has lots of cars to do a comparison of different age cars the way he did with parking sensors. Autopilot testing would be much more complex to do and he wants to actually sell the cars so he can't afford to be too negative.
 
#31
qwickshot said:
I got to the end of the article and thought so where’s the whistle blowing?

Whistleblowers are those who uncover illegal activities what are being swept under the carpet.

All I can see is someone who has leaked a load of data which in itself is illegal but so far there has been no allocation of foul play against tesla.

If the data showed that Tesla’s claims of less accidents have been falsified, that’s fraud and should be dealt with accordingly.

But all we’ve got is some information about complaints and some ‘concerns’ from an individual employee. Those concerns didn’t need them to themselves break the law to air. 5 minutes on this forum would tell you the same thing.

So tell me, why is this person a whistleblower and not a disgruntled ex-employee who stole company data on their way out the door (which is illegal).
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Exactly my first thought; whistle blower"!
A misuse of the term to sensationalise and provide click bait.
 
#32
In case it changes the direction of the thread, the basis for which Handelsblatt approached me was for an investigation by them to see if customer complaints after accidents had been treated seriously by Tesla or not.

In my case they did do a full analysis (whilst my car was in repair shop) and came back to me quickly. Handelsblatt noted, like with other Tesla customers, that Tesla’s final analysis/conclusion was provided by phone and not in a written form. 🤔
 
#33
Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah clickbait. FSD is not 100%, it's maybe 95%. But, I still trust it more than some people I know... It's not emotional, it's always paying attention, and it doesn't care if people cut it off or if people behave like idiots. if there's anything negative about it, it's that it's too polite and I would like it to be a bit more aggressive
 
#35
Pagemakers said:
How can the way I’m driving cause the autopilot issues I am having?
Click to expand...

Might be something to do with the choices you have made for settings? No idea what / which though.

I've been here a while, so I'm familiar with your experiences over time. I haven't done significant miles of late, so I haven't spoken up about my experience in case it has changed and I've not had the chance to notice the chance, but until then my experiences were in the "works well" camp. That's over 4 cars going back a number of years (so none of them has been bad, relative to the others). In all that time there have been plenty of posts here along the lines of "OMG just had massive phantom braking at 70MPH in fast lane" followed by a number of people saying "Me too, all the time" and then some people saying "Not me, never". (yeah, some shades of Grey rather than only Black and White as I've written it :) )

So I'm strongly of the view that there is variability. But given how much discussion there has been on this forum we don't seem have figured out what that variability is - which is a surprise. Yours has "got worse" (so at least you have experienced a time when it was better (and I think you posted that a recent update was better, unless you have done more miles since and disproved that initial "was good" journey?), others are saying "Mine has been stable", and for others "Always been unpredictable" and "Always been fine"

But if there is variability, some cars (or "setting choices" or something related to "Camera quality / alignment" ) ... then I reckon that THAT is newsworthy.
 
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#37
I do wish they would compare phantom braking to the BMW i3 from 2016 ;) My Mobileye cruise control could be best described as braking when there is anything on the camera... sun; rain; parked cars; shadows... time to brake. You do get used to covering the accelerator though and of course there was never any software update to address the issue ;)
 
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