FSD is a fraud

[rxlawdude]

No, "fraud" does not require malicious intent. It's still a fraud to sell tickets to a rocket ship to Alpha Centauri that is to be launched next year, even if you firmly believe it's possible.

Please provide a case law citation under either California or Federal jurisprudence backing up your proposition that an aspirational sale for a product in development is "fraud" because it's taking longer than you expected it to after reading very specific disclaimers and potential roadblocks disclosed by the seller.)

I'll wait.

 

[rxlawdude]

So you are of the mind that most online forum disagreements involve “trolls”. People really gotta stop perpetuating the idea that people who make negative comments are trolls. God forbid someone accept the fact that many people literally do have opposing views that aren’t just expressing them to be irritating. This attitude is becoming more prevalent than actual trolling

No, but I'll take on a troll who proffers FALSE statements.

 

[rxlawdude]

If they don’t start releasing at least SOME of the beta features to us “regular” FSD buyers, I would start calling this a fraud. There is a lot of useful stuff the beta has that I would love to use on a daily basis.

What time frame? As much as I tend to lambast the sue-age, I am also of the mind that if FSD (and I'm really talking SAE L2 plus rather than robo-taxi) were to never be delivered (never being, for example, three more years), I'd be right there with the sue-birds.

I do expect incremental release of features, the first of which I believe will be in weeks or months.

 

[rxlawdude]

I love the down votes.

So you indeed have admitted you're just an a-hat troll.

 

[rxlawdude]

It can be an attempt to acquire money by deception. When Elon oversaw construction of the November 2016 video and allowed it to say "Awaiting Regulatory Approval" when he knew the video was not their FSD software, and that regulatory approval was least of the limitations of the system, while encouraging people to buy an 'unlock code' that turned on Full-Self Driving, he intentionally collected money he was not entitled to. That Nov 2016 system was not powerful enough to do FSD, and it still isn't. Watch how slowly it reacts to sudden changes in the lane markers or barriers. We aren't even nearly quick enough to avoid moving objects since we can't always avoid static objects.

This is an observation. I did not go into FSD blindly. But the OP does have a valid point. It's been almost 5 years since it's been "just waiting for approval".

You forgot the "software validation" part, always mentioned along with regulatory approval.

 

[TessP100D]

So you indeed have admitted you're just an a-hat troll.

I don‘t hate Tesla You knucklehead. I have been ‘’all-in’’ on Tesla for years.
I however am not afraid to call out Tesla or Elon Musk when they do dumb stuff.
FSD and the yoke are just dumb.

that’s all. No need to launch personal attacks just because you have a different opinion.

 

[rxlawdude]

Agreed about FSD in general, even crappy "autopilot" which slams on the breaks when it gets 75ft from a car ahead and you stare at the review mirror quickly wondering if the person behind is going to smash into the rear of you due to the stupid "vision" system.

Instead of being too busy looking in your mirror, try taking over as you are supposed to. If you read instructions, that is.

 

[rxlawdude]

I don‘t hate Tesla You knucklehead. I have been ‘’all-in’’ on Tesla for years.
I however am not afraid to call out Tesla or Elon Musk when they do dumb stuff.
FSD and the yoke are just dumb.

that’s all. No need to launch personal attacks just because you have a different opinion.

Screaming fraud is an asshat move and borderline defamatory. Sorry you don't see that.

I make no comment on your OPINION about the yoke. But I do get triggered with defamatory remarks intended to provoke.

 

[Young_0z]

I purchased the FSD option on my Model 3 after seeing the price going up. I didn’t purchase it when it was first mentioned but instead purchased EAP and ended up getting it when it was an additional $2k totaling $7k. Now it’s $10k. I knew and understood that the features would be released over time and one day it would be fully autonomous. I understand that when a FULL FSD (level 5) gets released I’d be set knowing that I already paid for it at a lower price. At the moment I am satisfied knowing that they are working on releasing features and excited about the new beta they released. I don’t remember them giving an exact date for the full FSD to be released. I got what I paid for. I don’t see it as fraud on Elon/Tesla’s end IMO.

 

[AndreP]

That plus you still have people, bikes and animals to deal with. You are unlikely to be putting a device on every moving object that can go on the road with the proper sensors to report the information needed to avoid it. In the end, the sensors on the car are still required.

Vehicles will definitely still need sensors etc, but I'm thinking unlocking truly autonomous driving and the really big safety/efficiency gains won't happen without interconnectivity and communication.

Imagine a scenario where you have 10 vehicles driving near one another with FSD-like technology and an animal runs out onto the road. You have 10 separate computer systems all trying to interpret the data individually and figure out what to do next, and then each individual vehicle needs to interpret how the other 9 are reacting and figure out what to do in response. Why wouldn't you centralize it and have one computer system pathing everything with minimal room for interpretation and wasted energy?

Imagine having dozens of cars stopped at a red light, each one visually interpreting what each other is doing, what the lights are doing, when it's safe to move, etc. I think by the time Level 5 autonomy is available, this concept ^^ will feel antiquated af and will be replaced by the Internet of Things.

 

[Spacep0d]

No, "fraud" does not require malicious intent. It's still a fraud to sell tickets to a rocket ship to Alpha Centauri that is to be launched next year, even if you firmly believe it's possible.

Replace 'Alpha Centauri' with 'Heaven' from any religious narrative. See the problem with this? Intent matters. A sincere belief in a claim may be at cross-purposes with the data, may not be testable, may violate the laws of logic, but fraud it is not. Intent matters.

Fraudsters employ intentional deception to manipulate one or more subjects into a belief that benefits the fraudster's motives. This could be the faith healer, con man, 'psychic', quack doctor practicing some kind of sham medicine, or someone selling two tickets to paradise in the afterlife.

The person who sincerely believes in something false or unavailable to peer-review or independent verification is not a fraudster—even if they're factually wrong. Their intent may be good and even altruistic from their sincere perspective. The fraudster knows they're defrauding people. The sincere believer is not the same as the 'faith healer' who uses myriad parlor tricks to fool audiences into believing their 'miracles' for an obvious profit motive. One may share their sincere belief (not fraud) but the other is committing knowing deception for personal gain...fraud.

Of course, this is a far cry from FSD, which is the named 'goal' of an iterative technological convergent evolution which will inevitably lead to FSD at some point in the future—but it will happen. Safe and reasonable self-driving is possible now in most conditions barring edge cases, but without fixing those edge cases Tesla cannot really release FSD, nor would it be safe without quick and decisive intervention where necessary. This is why beta-testing is so important. We are simply at a point in this evolution where FSD is not yet fully-realized...like the early days of rocketry before rockets were somewhat reliable enough to trust with precious human cargo. Edison tried rat hair as a light bulb filament, supposedly, long before he got to copper wire. In other words, iterative evidence-based technology cannot be compared to fraud simply because it's not fully-realized at the moment.

That said, I think fraud requires knowing deception and an intent to defraud.

 

[Ptheven]

You really ougt to talk with a defamation attorney before stating and repeating a demonstrably false statement.

Elon's supposed to be everyone's role model around here and constantly talks out of his ass, though.

 

[rxlawdude]

Elon's supposed to be everyone's role model around here and constantly talks out of his ass, though.

Role model? No. Worthy of admiration, definitely. Most naysayers are more envious than anything else.

 

[stopcrazypp]

The contemporaneous news reports do say SAE Level 5 but I'm not sure if that was a direct information from Tesla or just that the description of FSD was clearly SAE Level 5. I'm not sure why it matters, most consumers don't know anything about SAE taxonomy, and I'm pretty sure they'd be happy with a car that matches the website description.

Teslas will now be sold with enhanced hardware suite for full autonomy

Current cars with “Hardware I” will get better for a time, but new cars will outstrip that.

arstechnica.com

This was discussed in other thread, but the question is which statements by Elon (which many consumers may not have heard or seen anyways, even as a quote) constitute a verbal contract for Tesla to deliver to individual buyers, versus just another forward looking statement (which may have consequences with investors and SEC, but typically not with the individual buyers). There's probably a few other talks that Elon mentioned L5 if you dig (although it's not always clear which definition he is using), but the audience it was for was not the car buyers.

I do know however, there are more concrete written things on the order page regarding FSD, but none of that rises to L5 level. The most that was promised was during the 2016 launch, with features that would require L4 to accomplish ("no action required by person in driver's seat"), but actually would explicitly not be L5 due to the wording "full self-driving in almost all circumstances".
https://cdn.motor1.com/images/mgl/6B9KE/s1/enhanced-autopilot-self-driving-tesla-autopilot-cost.jpg

L5, no matter if you use the NHTSA definition or the SAE one, must be able to drive the car in all circumstances/conditions, not just a subset ("almost all" is not L5).
NHTSA: "An automated driving system (ADS) on the vehicle can do all the driving in all circumstances."
Automated Vehicles for Safety | NHTSA
SAE: "The feature can drive the vehicle under all conditions." "same as level 4, but feature can drive everywhere in all conditions"
SAE Levels of Driving Automation™ Refined for Clarity and International Audience - SAE Levels of Driving Automation™ Refined for Clarity and International Audience

 

[drtimhill]

The contemporaneous news reports do say SAE Level 5 but I'm not sure if that was a direct information from Tesla or just that the description of FSD was clearly SAE Level 5. I'm not sure why it matters, most consumers don't know anything about SAE taxonomy, and I'm pretty sure they'd be happy with a car that matches the website description.

True but beside the point, which is about people shouting "fraud" and "class action" etc. I'm actually sympathetic to their feeling let down .. Tesla is taking much longer than they promised, and may never deliver on the earlier and more optimistic promises. But anyone who bought into FSD with $$ (including me, btw) was taking a bet, whatever they may want to think, and guess what? ... sometimes you lose a bet. It's all marketing hype until they deliver, and anyone who believes marketing as factual has been living under a rock and/or has not compared what's in a frozen food box to the nice picture on the front

In fact, Tesla have taken on a massively difficult problem .. and they are getting closer and closer to cracking it. Will they succeed? I've no idea, but the journey is certainly interesting, and I for one am glad they undertook it. The world would be a more serene place without Elon, but far less interesting.

 

[qdeathstar]

Elon's supposed to be everyone's role model around here and constantly talks out of his ass, though.

Hell yes he is my roll model, have no regrets, got you for another 10k you mouth breathers!

 

[CyberGus]

Elon's supposed to be everyone's role model around here and constantly talks out of his ass, though.

That's his superpower. He was bitten by a radioactive asshole

 

[CyberGus]

Please provide a case law citation under either California or Federal jurisprudence backing up your proposition that an aspirational sale for a product in development is "fraud" because it's taking longer than you expected it to after reading very specific disclaimers and potential roadblocks disclosed by the seller.)

Your punctuation lacked an opening left-parenthesis, therefore The Court finds your statement invalid. Please surrender your Internet Law License at nearest available GameStop or FedEx/Kinkos.

 

[Daniel in SD]

This was discussed in other thread, but the question is which statements by Elon (which many consumers may not have heard or seen anyways, even as a quote) constitute a verbal contract for Tesla to deliver to individual buyers, versus just another forward looking statement (which may have consequences with investors and SEC, but typically not with the individual buyers). There's probably a few other talks that Elon mentioned L5 if you dig (although it's not always clear which definition he is using), but the audience it was for was not the car buyers.

I do know however, there are more concrete written things on the order page regarding FSD, but none of that rises to L5 level. The most that was promised was during the 2016 launch, with features that would require L4 to accomplish ("no action required by person in driver's seat"), but actually would explicitly not be L5 due to the wording "full self-driving in almost all circumstances".
https://cdn.motor1.com/images/mgl/6B9KE/s1/enhanced-autopilot-self-driving-tesla-autopilot-cost.jpg

L5, no matter if you use the NHTSA definition or the SAE one, must be able to drive the car in all circumstances/conditions, not just a subset ("almost all" is not L5).
NHTSA: "An automated driving system (ADS) on the vehicle can do all the driving in all circumstances."
Automated Vehicles for Safety | NHTSA
SAE: "The feature can drive the vehicle under all conditions." "same as level 4, but feature can drive everywhere in all conditions"
SAE Levels of Driving Automation™ Refined for Clarity and International Audience - SAE Levels of Driving Automation™ Refined for Clarity and International Audience

"Almost all circumstances" is consistent with SAE Level 5. From SAE J3016:
“Unconditional/not ODD-specific” means that the ADS can operate the vehicle under all driver-manageable road conditions within its region of the world. This means, for example, that there are no design-based weather, time-of-day, or geographical restrictions on where and when the ADS can operate the vehicle. However, there may be conditions not manageable by a driver in which the ADS would also be unable to complete a given trip (e.g., white-out snow storm, flooded roads, glare ice, etc.) until or unless the adverse conditions clear. At the onset of such unmanageable conditions the ADS would perform the DDT fallback to achieve a minimal risk condition (e.g., by pulling over to the side of the road and waiting for the conditions to change)."

I'm not sure why any of this matters since they clearly haven't delivered after nearly five years. I think there's a good reason they changed "dependent upon extensive software validation" to "dependent on achieving." The first disclaimer was misleading at best and Tesla should offer a refund to people who bought FSD before March 2019.

 

[arri]

"Fraud" sounds like Tesla intentionally sold autopilot FSD with the intention to deliver nothing. I think we should give them more credit, autopilot is not some vaporware. However, I think they promised more than they can deliver (any time soon). Autopilot FSD is far from finished. It needs better software, hardware (cpu + camera's), before it will become anything above level 2.

Wonder how long it will take before Tesla will realise we didn't pay for a kickstarter campaign with an infinitive deliverdate. Deliver or refund!