Hey moderator, where is the 'Hey Elon, where is FSD?' thread?

[dhanson865]

I feel like if you sample your vertical angle frequently enough you can always catch it.

Let me try the r/ELI5 method.

lets use the human body as an example on a flat stable surface (floor, ground, whatever)

If you get on your hands and knees you can crawl, you can stay stil, you can lean forwards/backwards, and side/side but still be stable. Gravity will hold you in place. No surprises. This is analogous to a car with 4 wheels.

If you stand up you have less stability but more mobility. You can bend at the ankles, the knees, the waist. If you lean over too far you fall over. Gravity is still pulling you down, no surprises. This is analogous to a motorcycle. The key is to not lean over more than you need to.

If you stand on top of a narrow stool or step ladder, on the very top its a tiny flat surface. If you lean over a bit you are OK, if you lean over too far you fall off and hit the ground much harder than the above example. This is analogous to a helicopter or slow plane (tilt too far without forward speed in relation to your control surfaces and you fall out of the sky). The key is to not lean over more than you need to.

If you stand on top of a flag pole you are very unstable, it's not even a flat surface. You might be able to lean slightly without falling off but definitely less than you could lean in the above examples. This is analogous to a cargo rocket. You don't want to lean at all. You can turn with thrust at a 1 or 2 degree angle but you can't do the looping swooping changes a helicopter or plane can do. If you fall over you go boom.

Say remember when I talked about the autopilot / flight computer on the rocket. Well it knows when it's tilted to far and will blow itself up if it can't correct the situation. That's how automated it is. It'll take one for the team if it has to.

I don't say this lightly. People, many people have lost their lives just trying to keep these things pointed upwards and moving straight. It's not an easy field and I have a hard time giving that sort of gravitas to talking about autopilot for a car. You can walk away form just about any Tesla crash.

List of spaceflight-related accidents and incidents - Wikipedia

 

[_jal_]

Are they? I must be remembering wrong, sorry.

Please don't take this as an ad hominem attack, but then you're an idiot, stupid fanboi.

Obviously I'm joking. When I was in college though, this guy I was working on a project with (it was a CS class and I was a CO. He was a CS) said to me "Don't take this personally, but your code sucks." How am I not supposed to take that personally? It did suck and his comment caused me to be much more critical of my code for the decades after, but still ...

 

[AnxietyRanger]

There's an interesting story of von Braun standing in a very dangerous place and almost dying, so that he could catch the moment and reason V2 launches were failing. And catch he did.

No doubt launching rockets is hard. But SpaceX is a separate company and Elon is not the engineer making these things, so AP is not related to SpaceX at all. Not at this level anyway.

So, back to FSD?

 

[conman]

Please don't take this as an ad hominem attack, but then you're an idiot, stupid fanboi.

Obviously I'm joking. When I was in college though, this guy I was working on a project with (it was a CS class and I was a CO. He was a CS) said to me "Don't take this personally, but your code sucks." How am I not supposed to take that personally? It did suck and his comment caused me to be much more critical of my code for the decades after, but still ...

I really wasn't sure how to respond to this... but anyway I'm a software engineer myself and the idea of working on the problems of FSD fascinate me and I'd love to be involved. No doubt it would actually be hell at the moment given everything we've discussed so far so I'll stick to postulating regarding the problems and making false assumptions about camera locations.

 

[_jal_]

I was onto my second martini chilling on the patio when I wrote that - I don't know why I wrote it. It's a true story though! But had nothing to do with anything when I read it this morning.

As for FSD, I thought Tesla was basically just going to do this:
End-to-End Deep Learning for Self-Driving Cars

But if they were, the NN would be changing and I think a lot of the control fiddling they're doing wouldn't be going on. Does anyone know? Is this all snake-oil too?

 

[alcibiades]

Interesting comments in a market related thread from a forum member comparing his experiences with AP1 and Volvo Pilot Drive 2:

It is really rare that i share the opinion of "myusername" but i think (as i have posted on the dedicated thread) there is real competition around NOW.

From S-Class Drive Pilot vs Tesla AP :
Just to chime in on the general theme of Tesla Autopilot V1 vs other offerings:

I believe most of us die hard Tesla fans are not aware of the progress other automakers are achieving.

When AP1 first got released (i forgot exactly when, 2015 MS85D here) i was amazed, since i never would have expected to receive, overnight, a car with these capabilities. In the first year i got the impression, that there was a learning curve, from drunk driver to an insecure new driver (so to speak). Later (maybe in the wake of dumping Mobileye) i havn't had the impression AP1 was evolving drastically, as i have expected due to the talk about fleet learning and such.

Here's why: I drive the same 140k route from my home to a lake, always the same route, maybe 30 times a year. AP1 has the same bugs each and every time: Breaking in a tunnel where nothing is (no car, no obstacle whatsoever), wanting to take one particular of ramp instead of going straight. Since I love the car I still use AP1 as often as possible, but disengage before said places, sometimes I try anyway...It's annoying but as a fan, I can live with it.

Now: Since this spring we have as a towing vehicle a new Volvo XC90 with Pilot Assist 2, and guess what: It handles the said route without any flaw at all. I now have 5'000km on it with maybe 80% PA2 engaged, mostly highways and i have to say, the experience is much better than AP2 from Tesla.

A nice feature is also, that you can nudge the car to the side within a lane, without PilotAssist disengaging completely, it just lets you steer, comes on again, when you let it. I love this feature. This also means you can drive a roundabout and continue on PilotAssist without re-engaging the thing. Something i find annoying with Teslas AP1.

Conclusion: I hope Tesla will soon follow up on the promises made (AP2, FSD etc.). And i would advise everybody inclined to think that Tesla is years ahead of any competition, and eventually bases his investments decision on that, to go drive what the competition (Volvo / Mercedes) has to offer.

Disclaimer: I am firmly convinced, that Tesla is years ahead of any competition, but because of their strategy to go full electric, secret master plan etc. and not Driver Assisting features, FSD, or AP 1 or 2.

Also saw a Super Cruise ad on the VMAs while my teen was watching. I believe it said "the first hands free experience" or some such.

Competition is catching (caught?) up.

 

[hockeythug]

Interesting comments in a market related thread from a forum member comparing his experiences with AP1 and Volvo Pilot Drive 2:



Also saw a Super Cruise ad on the VMAs while my teen was watching. I believe it said "the first hands free experience" or some such.

Competition is catching (caught?) up.

I saw that ad as well. Went out of there way(short of showing someone texting) to say and show you don't have to touch the wheel.

 

[McRat]

Interesting comments in a market related thread from a forum member comparing his experiences with AP1 and Volvo Pilot Drive 2:



Also saw a Super Cruise ad on the VMAs while my teen was watching. I believe it said "the first hands free experience" or some such.

Competition is catching (caught?) up.

It was sort of cute. It was man and woman in the CT6 talking to each other in sign language. Not sure there's a huge market there, but clever ad.

 

[Tangible]

Competition is catching (caught?) up.

That's really our only hope. Tesla has been willing to see its Nav technology fall behind, and its fit-and-finish quality lag the industry leaders, but up to now it's been competing only with its own broken promises on AP - a sector where they have loudly staked out a leadership claim. Now that other manufacturers are starting to deploy better solutions, perhaps Tesla will make a genuine effort to at least stay current.

 

[NerdUno]

Funny that, during the Model 3 introduction, I don't recall a single mention of autonomous driving.

 

[_jal_]

Funny that, during the Model 3 introduction, I don't recall a single mention of autonomous driving.

He said something about it and how it is just getting started or something like that.

 

[tomas]

Well it is interesting. When I first reserved in 2010, neither AP nor FSD were in the Tesla lexicon. So, there were many of us who were not brought to Tesla by that. Now, we have fellow members for whom that was a critical factor. I've driven a non AP Tesla for 5 years now, and perfectly happy without it. Would still have reserved my two model 3s if it never existed. But I will probably equip them with EAP because I'd like the tacc. It is interesting hearing from people who place a super high value on it. Diversity...

 

[Draginol]

The AP was what made me pull the trigger on the Model X. But there were other prerequisites as well such as the Super Charger network.

When the model S came out, not having even TACC was a show stopper for me.

It’s a cost benefit ratio. Electric isn’t enough on its own, especially at the price premium. It needed to be competitive. Thus, I would have eventually gotten a MX without AP as long as it had TACC and the super charger network.

That’s why I think the Chevy Bolt is screwed. Without a fast charging network it’s not very practical.

However: the issue here is how AP2 was sold to us. It’s pretty obvious Tesla was. It honest about AP2 quality. It was sold as being >= AP1 by December 2016. So I hoe people don’t try to imply that people had unreasonable expectations.

 

[SlicedBr3ad]

Guys, any chance we can steer back to Elon's FSD promises?



That is certainly possible. Arguably Pro Pilot 2 and related aids from Volvo are already superior to AP1 and AP2 as they currently stand - similar lane keeping and superior blind spot detection and 360 vision available to the user. A new Volvo helps the driver more today than a new Tesla.

Cadillac's Super Cruise and Audi A8 Level 3 system are also interesting developments.

But let's consider Elon's now debunked 3-6 month tweet in January. What was it based on? Unless we think he totally lied, I think it comes down to one of two:

1) Tesla is adding e.g. some fisheye camera use on top of EAP to recognize traffic lights etc. and offers this to FSD cars only on the basis that EAP uses four cameras only (its front main and narrow are too narrow to see lights and side marker cameras look back).

or

2) Tesla's separate (and it is separate) FSD codebase is much further along than in pessimistic analysis and will soon run the show instead of the limited EAP codebase. (The coast to coast might tell us something.)

Well, recently some traffic light graphics were found in the firmware... maybe a traffic sign and light assistance that works only on FSD cars (or speed signs only on EAP)...

Multiple places claimed autopilot team is 100+ people. It's hard to believe most of them are developing 17.32.x, 17.28.x, etc - incremental software updates. I believe option 2 is the Likely answer. What I'm expecting is there is major fsd software development in progress. This team is the reason EM said coast to coast self driving late this year, early next year. Once that happens, it's possible we'll start seeing more than minor eap/fsd features become gradually available.

 

[conman]

Maybe I remember incorrectly, but I don't recall this last sentence in the FSD description when I purchased my car a few months ago. There are no signs of them backtracking on FSD being offered as a feature but instead they're now concentrating on making revenue off people using their cars to make money for themselves. Cart, horse?

At the very least, it appears they still believe they will be providing FSD if they're planning on capitalising on it in other ways...

 

[verygreen]

it's worth remembering that "next year" is 2017 (very neat of them to use relative value here instead of absolute. It's kind of like my favorite fish shop has a permanently affixed banner that says "Free fish tomorrow" (implying that "but you keep coming today", I imagine)).

 

[NerdUno]

Same applies in Spanish: mañana doesn't really mean tomorrow. It's more like never... at least for men.