Elon: "Feature complete for full self driving this year"

[mongo]

@mongo is wrong if the features did not exist yet in 2016 that Tesla claimed needed activation/validation/calibration/approval. A feature not yet made can not just need those and saying so would be extremely misleading.

If I was delivering your new car and say your Model 3 is awaiting for the final detailing and then you can get but it turns out the car is not even made yet, yes that would be a lie even though technically it is waiting for the detailing too...

The open question of course is: did the features exist or not. On this there are different beliefs.

Again, this was a blog post about the hardware. That hardware runs a NN, that NN needs to be calibrated/ programmed. The fact that they called out a lack of features shows that the features did not exist in a usable state.

Lame analogy warning:
If someone back in the day was selling a high end gaming PC that was advertised as being able to run Half Life 3 at 60+ fps with a demo scene, was that a lie?

Again, I'm not claiming there are not valid criticisms about Tesla's media output and the impression it gave, but one can make those criticisms without needing to distort what they wrote.

 

[electronblue]

Again, this was a blog post about the hardware.

Now it is you who is misrepresenting history.

Tesla spoke of the entire FSD system on Design Studio with these words, only waiting for validation and regulatory approval.

If it turns out (many of) the FSD features did not exist at all at that time, and they knew or should have known it did not exist, such a thing would indeed be a lie. The question of course remains what existed and what did not.

Come on now. We can not say something needs just calibration and validation if that somehing does not exist yet.

If you believe the features existed, fine, but the story changes if one believes otherwise in my view.

 

[mongo]

Now it is you who is misrepresenting history.

Tesla spoke of the entire FSD system on Design Studio with these words, only waiting for validation and regulatory approval.

If it turns out (many of) the FSD features did not exist at all at that time, and they knew or should have known it did not exist, such a thing would indeed be a lie. The question of course remains what existed and what did not.

Come on now. We can not say something needs just calibration and validation if that somehing does not exist yet.

If you believe the features existed, fine, but the story changes if one believes otherwise in my view.

Paint it Black was originally released on the blog. Having it also on the Design Studio page does change things.
The use of the work "just" can change meaning. Tesla did not say just, they said it needed calibration, which is technically correct from an automotive software POV. At the macro view, it is the same as loading new values for an existing ABS module .

Can you give a link for the wayback machine so I can be on the same page as you? I'm still seeing largely the same wording on tesla.com/autopilot.

Main heading

Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars
All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.

October 2016:

Tesla’s Enhanced Autopilot software is expected to complete validation and be rolled out to your car via an over-the-air update in December 2016, subject to regulatory approval.

somewhere between Jan 19 and Jan 25 2017 it changed to

Tesla’s Enhanced Autopilot software has begun rolling out and features will continue to be introduced as validation is completed, subject to regulatory approval.

Note, not talking about calibration, only validation now, and regulatory in future.

FSD on all dates

Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction. It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available, as this is highly dependent on local regulatory approval.

Which does say it will not be available for an indeterminate time (though perhaps not for the exact reasons listed).

 

[electronblue]

Here is what Tesla sold — no mention of any feature waiting to be implemented, just waiting completion of validation and regulatory approval.

Now it is of course true they gave an open timeline especially for FSD but the reasonable expectation of the customer is quite different for a feature they are told does not exist yet versus a feature they are told is awaiting validation and approval only...

So for Tesla’s (ethic’s) sake let’s hope the EAP/FSD features did exist in October 2016 and really have only been going through validation since.

 

[mongo]

Here is what Tesla sold — no mention of any feature waiting to be implemented, just waiting completion of validation and regulatory approval.

Now it is of course true they gave an open timeline especially for FSD but the reasonable expectation of the customer is quite different for a feature they are told does not exist yet versus a feature they are told is awaiting validation and approval only...

So for Tesla’s (ethic’s) sake let’s hope the EAP/FSD features did exist in October 2016 and really have only been going through validation since.

EAP was only slightly late with the first features, so that seems like it was well in progress at the time.
FSD is stated to have an unbounded timeline, so expectations are due to the reader. I do agree the demo could make one think there was less validation/ development needed. (it was a really really geofenced FSD version ).

 

[electronblue]

@mongo I don’t think we are getting anywhere on this one. In summary my view: Tesla said FSD needed validation and approval in October 2016, they did not state it needed making. So let’s hope that was true and not a lie.

 

[electronblue]

Are you suggesting that Tesla did not release unconfirmed lane changes for NoA on March 15th as Elon tweeted?

yes. It's compiled out. I am sorely disappointed.

So apparently Tesla did not include unconfirmed lane changes in the latest EAP NoA.

 

[rnortman]

I'm not saying people weren't confused/ misinterpreted Tesla's post. As we've gone over in the video thread, the post theme was the hardware capabilities, and specifically said that the SW was feature lacking, and would be for some time just to reach AP1. The post doesn't even mention regulations as a constraint..

Why are you obsessed over the blog post? Was the blog post included on the order page? Did they link to the blog post from the pages in which they embedded the demo video? How does the existence of a blog post only seen by people who follow the blog in any way make the video (and the order pages) not a lie?

And you cannot seriously argue that the blog post is entirely forthcoming either. It does not contradict the assertions made in the video. It provides slightly more nuanced language, but the language is still extremely misleading at best.

I am happy to engage people over whether AP2 hardware will ever be up to the jobs of operating without supervision, but at this point anybody who argues that Tesla didn't intentionally mislead buyers about the status of FSD development in 2016 is either ignorant of the facts or is not arguing in good faith. Arguing the way lawyers and politicians argue -- with a clear agenda -- has never really appealed to me.

 

[mongo]

@mongo I don’t think we are getting anywhere on this one. In summary my view: Tesla said FSD needed validation and approval in October 2016, they did not state it needed making. So let’s hope that was true and not a lie.

I get your POV . What were they claiming/ implying/ advertising versus what they thought they though the state of development was.

Extensive validation with unknown timeline.FSD was a very future looking feature list: automatic superchargers, "what we believe will be", not known when what features will be available. It reads like an anti sell, especially with the disclaimer in bold.
From my read, regardless of the real reason, there was no guaranteed functionality versus timeline. Offering the option to buy the feature made it seem pending. Down the road, FSD on HW3+ may arrive along with HW2.x swap out, in which case the feature set will be fulfilled. I really wish they had allowed people to transfer FSD to their new cars, or gave 100% option value at trade in...

 

[mongo]

Why are you obsessed over the blog post? Was the blog post included on the order page? Did they link to the blog post from the pages in which they embedded the demo video? How does the existence of a blog post only seen by people who follow the blog in any way make the video (and the order pages) not a lie?

I was focused on the blog post because, to my understanding, that was the source of the video originally and the only place is currently exists on Tesla's site. That page provided context for the video that linking form YouTube would not. @electronblue helpfully pointed out it was also embedded elsewhere. So we have been discussing the wording on those pages. I do apologize to you for not realizing it was cross posted.

And you cannot seriously argue that the blog post is entirely forthcoming either. It does not contradict the assertions made in the video. It provides slightly more nuanced language, but the language is still extremely misleading at best.

From the POV of showing the HW is FSD capable, I think the blog is clear. From the POV of Tesla having a full FSD solution ready, the blog does not do a good job of clarifying that misconception. However, it (and the order page) both say there is no defined timeline for FSD.

I am happy to engage people over whether AP2 hardware will ever be up to the jobs of operating without supervision, but at this point anybody who argues that Tesla didn't intentionally mislead buyers about the status of FSD development in 2016 is either ignorant of the facts or is not arguing in good faith. Arguing the way lawyers and politicians argue -- with a clear agenda -- has never really appealed to me.

Again, they gave no timeline for FSD (whereas EAP was projected for Dec 16), so I don't see the intentional misleading aspect. They showed the HW doing a task and said "if you buy the hardware and this option package (now or for additional $$ later), we will upgrade the software at some point in the future to do these things."

Again, my apologies for misinterpreting you due to not realizing the video was embedded outside of the blog post.

 

[diplomat33]

It occurred to me: the problematic tweets from Musk only seem to be with Tesla's FSD. Unless I missed something, Musk's SpaceX tweets are generally more reliable. He'll tweet a pic showing what SpaceX is actually doing and seems to avoid too many far off predictions that get missed. I mean, I don't see him tweeting that BFR will be done in "3-6 months" when they are still years away. If the problem was with Musk himself, you would expect all his tweets to follow the same pattern. But that's not the case. Perhaps the issue is less with Musk himself and more with the subject matter. FSD is a different problem than space rocketry. There is more uncertainty in achieving true FSD than there is with launching a space rocket. Also, Musk has a background in Applied Physics and Material Science so SpaceX is probably more his area of expertise. So the uncertainty of FSD combined with the fact that FSD is not Musk's area of expertise, might explain better why his FSD tweet predictions have been missed so often.

 

[electronblue]

@diplomat33 Tesla is more dependent on the public for both its financing and sales so a different ballgame. Arguably the ”need to tweet” could be higher at Tesla.

 

[diplomat33]

@diplomat33 Tesla is more dependent on the public for both its financing and sales so a different ballgame.

True. I had not thought of that.

Maybe the simplest explanation is that he feels a certain pressure to cater to the public which leads to over promising. After all, his tweets about FSD feature X is "3-6 months away" usually come as a response to another tweet wanting to know how soon we will get said feature. So he feels pressure to over promise to make the public happy and excited for Tesla products.

 

[NetworkNerd]

@mongo I don’t think we are getting anywhere on this one. In summary my view: Tesla said FSD needed validation and approval in October 2016, they did not state it needed making. So let’s hope that was true and not a lie.

I have a slightly different approach to this one. I am wondering when the video was made if they thought they were close to completing FSD - just needing to complete and verify some of their development. However also remember all of the big shake ups that were happening in the Auto Pilot department within Tesla. (Mind you my memory is not very good, so please take this with a grain of salt) But what I 'believe' I remembered was a lot of us were complaining about how EAP/FSD was not even on par with AP1 (before Karpathy) then the one head guy from the Auto Pilot team quit, and Karpathy took his place. If memory serves me, it took several long months but under Karpathy's direction the NN version emerged, which started getting us towards that AP1 parity and finally to where we are today.
So the way I am 'now' looking at the original FSD video we are discussing, is I am (or I am wanting to believe) that Musk was under the impression they were getting close to that cross-country demo, but as they kept peeling back the covers, and (assuming kept adding /if, else, next loops) into their original EAP/FSD code - they just could not get over that hump to actually make it work right, and pretty much had to start from scratch. Which is why we still don't have FSD or even automatic NOA.
Just my $0.02

 

[mongo]

I have a slightly different approach to this one. I am wondering when the video was made if they thought they were close to completing FSD - just needing to complete and verify some of their development. However also remember all of the big shake ups that were happening in the Auto Pilot department within Tesla. (Mind you my memory is not very good, so please take this with a grain of salt) But what I 'believe' I remembered was a lot of us were complaining about how EAP/FSD was not even on par with AP1 (before Karpathy) then the one head guy from the Auto Pilot team quit, and Karpathy took his place. If memory serves me, it took several long months but under Karpathy's direction the NN version emerged, which started getting us towards that AP1 parity and finally to where we are today.
So the way I am 'now' looking at the original FSD video we are discussing, is I am (or I am wanting to believe) that Musk was under the impression they were getting close to that cross-country demo, but as they kept peeling back the covers, and (assuming kept adding /if, else, next loops) into their original EAP/FSD code - they just could not get over that hump to actually make it work right, and pretty much had to start from scratch. Which is why we still don't have FSD or even automatic NOA.
Just my $0.02

That would be favorable, but those who have done more poking under the hood do not believe it to be the case. (unless Elon was fed a line of bull from the AP lead and wasn't testing the system himself like he does now). 3-4 months for the first EAP features to roll out does not reflect favorably on the FSD status.

I think the video was an attempt to head off panic/ fear that the MobilEye split was the ending of AP by showcasing the hardware's ability. Especially since AP2 would not have any features for many months.

 

[diplomat33]

I have a slightly different approach to this one. I am wondering when the video was made if they thought they were close to completing FSD - just needing to complete and verify some of their development. However also remember all of the big shake ups that were happening in the Auto Pilot department within Tesla. (Mind you my memory is not very good, so please take this with a grain of salt) But what I 'believe' I remembered was a lot of us were complaining about how EAP/FSD was not even on par with AP1 (before Karpathy) then the one head guy from the Auto Pilot team quit, and Karpathy took his place. If memory serves me, it took several long months but under Karpathy's direction the NN version emerged, which started getting us towards that AP1 parity and finally to where we are today.
So the way I am 'now' looking at the original FSD video we are discussing, is I am (or I am wanting to believe) that Musk was under the impression they were getting close to that cross-country demo, but as they kept peeling back the covers, and (assuming kept adding /if, else, next loops) into their original EAP/FSD code - they just could not get over that hump to actually make it work right, and pretty much had to start from scratch. Which is why we still don't have FSD or even automatic NOA.
Just my $0.02

I think you are half right. My theory is that the video was a simulation, using a lot of hardcoding and geofencing, designed to showcase what the AP2 hardware would be capable of. It was a hardware demo basically. Tesla had FSD as a major goal for their vehicles but as mongo alluded to, there would be a lot of skepticism around the future of autopilot as a result of the mobileye break up, new untested hardware and a slow roll out of features. Nobody would just take Tesla's word for it that they were going to do FSD without any sort of proof. So the video was designed to prove the merits of the hardware and boost confidence that AP2 had what it takes to do FSD. But I think Tesla also underestimated FSD. They had hard coded a lot and thought they could finish FSD relatively soon which is why they started selling FSD on the site. But then they had major setbacks as you point out. And as we know now, it was only with Karpathy that they slowed straightened the ship. Now, it looks like they are finally back on the right track to get to FSD.

 

[rnortman]

It occurred to me: the problematic tweets from Musk only seem to be with Tesla's FSD. Unless I missed something, Musk's SpaceX tweets are generally more reliable.

[...]

Perhaps the issue is less with Musk himself and more with the subject matter. FSD is a different problem than space rocketry. There is more uncertainty in achieving true FSD than there is with launching a space rocket. Also, Musk has a background in Applied Physics and Material Science so SpaceX is probably more his area of expertise. So the uncertainty of FSD combined with the fact that FSD is not Musk's area of expertise, might explain better why his FSD tweet predictions have been missed so often.

See my post on this subject here: Autonomous Car Progress

This, I think, is a big part of it. But ignorance is no excuse -- he is in a position of responsibility as CEO and he has an obligation to get this right. At the very least, he should have realized by now that he's out of his depth and walked back his claims, but he has not done that. Maybe he's too egotistical to realize he hasn't a clue, or maybe it's because he fears it would bankrupt the company.

I'll also point out that much of what he's said about SpaceX has been right but not yet the "really big" predictions about the BFR making intra-planetary hops so that you can get anywhere on the planet in 30 minutes, nor his predictions about how soon we'll have a colony on Mars. Those predictions are way out there and probably just about as far off as his FSD predictions, if you ask me. His Hyperloop stuff looks like a load of crap also.

Basically when his predictions are not too far beyond the "technology frontier" he does pretty well but when he gets cocky he completely loses it. He can't distinguish between hard but known and completely unknown, basically.

 

[mongo]

I think you are half right. My theory is that the video was a simulation, using a lot of hardcoding and geofencing, designed to showcase what the AP2 hardware would be capable of. It was a hardware demo basically. Tesla had FSD as a major goal for their vehicles but as mongo alluded to, there would be a lot of skepticism around the future of autopilot as a result of the mobileye break up, new untested hardware and a slow roll out of features. Nobody would just take Tesla's word for it that they were going to do FSD without any sort of proof. So the video was designed to prove the merits of the hardware and boost confidence that AP2 had what it takes to do FSD. But I think Tesla also underestimated FSD. They had hard coded a lot and thought they could finish FSD relatively soon which is why they started selling FSD on the site. But then they had major setbacks as you point out. And as we know now, it was only with Karpathy that they slowed straightened the ship. Now, it looks like they are finally back on the right track to get to FSD.

Yah...
I think Tesla has gotten more realistic and reasonable in their predictions and approach. From 'FSD cross country at the end of the year', to 'could have, but it would have been a lame, partly hard coded, single route cheat'. Maybe that was sour grapes, but I think it at least shows a willingness to admit to internal over-expectation and not release another FSD video that does not line up with short term capabilities.
Same with the current order page,' here are this months features, here is what we are planning on this year'. No more 'here the end goal we will reach someday'...

 

[diplomat33]

See my post on this subject here: Autonomous Car Progress

This, I think, is a big part of it. But ignorance is no excuse -- he is in a position of responsibility as CEO and he has an obligation to get this right. At the very least, he should have realized by now that he's out of his depth and walked back his claims, but he has not done that. Maybe he's too egotistical to realize he hasn't a clue, or maybe it's because he fears it would bankrupt the company.

I'll also point out that much of what he's said about SpaceX has been right but not yet the "really big" predictions about the BFR making intra-planetary hops so that you can get anywhere on the planet in 30 minutes, nor his predictions about how soon we'll have a colony on Mars. Those predictions are way out there and probably just about as far off as his FSD predictions, if you ask me. His Hyperloop stuff looks like a load of crap also.

Basically when his predictions are not too far beyond the "technology frontier" he does pretty well but when he gets cocky he completely loses it. He can't distinguish between hard but known and completely unknown, basically.

I agree that as the CEO, he should be more responsible. With respect to his bold futuristic SpaceX claims, yes, they may turn out to be optimistic too but at least he is not promising BFR in "3-6 months". LOL.

I would also point out that the world needs visionaries who ask "what if?" and push the envelope. Even if their future predictions don't come true right on schedule, they push everyone to innovate and do better. I want to see hyperloop become a reality someday. I want to see BFR routinely take passengers around the world in 30 minutes as easily as a today's commercial fights. I want to see a burgeoning Mars colony. So, if Musk helps makes that happen a bit sooner then that is a win. It's better to be daring and bold and get there late than to not even try at all.

 

[rnortman]

I want to see BFR routinely take passengers around the world in 30 minutes as easily as a today's commercial fights.

I'm not sure I agree actually. What's the greenhouse gas impact of the BFR vs slower means of transport? I know airplanes aren't the most environmentally friendly but rockets historically have been quite terrible, not only on greenhouse gas emissions but release of other pollutants. The only reason it's not a big deal is because there are so few rocket launches... except now there are more and more. I think it's getting to be a noticeable contributor.