Just a Place Keeper to See if I Am Right About the Future of AP1

[St Charles]

My understanding is that many replacement parts require the firmware be reflashed and the Service Centers are not able to flash anything but the latest they have. Is that your understanding too?

Let us know what you find out working with your SC.

Mike

The first response I got was along these lines. My plan is to challenge this notion as Tesla does not have the ability to accept terms and conditions on my behalf. Lack of an acceptance button does not absolve Tesla of this matter. I haven't needed to do major warranty work so the only concern I have so far is yearly maintenance.

 

[green1]

At the risk of handing over a bat and pointing to a dead horse, what didn't they deliver on AP1 Andy?

- On-ramp to off-ramp driving "without touching any controls"
- make it's way to you wherever you are on private property via "Summon"
- read your schedule and automatically pull out of your garage and meet you at your front door on private property
- automatic emergency braking that brings the vehicle to a complete stop to avoid a collision
- monitor stop signs, traffic lights, and pedestrians.

 

[sandpiper]

- On-ramp to off-ramp driving "without touching any controls"
- make it's way to you wherever you are on private property via "Summon"
- read your schedule and automatically pull out of your garage and meet you at your front door on private property
- automatic emergency braking that brings the vehicle to a complete stop to avoid a collision
- monitor stop signs, traffic lights, and pedestrians.

Could you please provide a link to where Tesla said that their first autopilot would do all of these things? I don't ever recall seeing it.

 

[NOLA_Mike]

The first response I got was along these lines. My plan is to challenge this notion as Tesla does not have the ability to accept terms and conditions on my behalf. Lack of an acceptance button does not absolve Tesla of this matter. I haven't needed to do major warranty work so the only concern I have so far is yearly maintenance.

Just a random example was when I had to have my charge port replaced on my P85D - I was told it required a re-flash. I am not one refusing updates, so this was just in general conversation with the techs. They would rather NOT re-flash because this is Ranger service and often the firmware flashes take a bit of time.


Mike

 

[green1]

1. Summon does work. If you were expecting that the car would drive 2000 feet across a large, occupied parking lot, then that's your extrapolation - not Tesla's.

Except that they promised it would find it's way to you wherever you are on private property. Summon doesn't do anything remotely like that. Now if it was just a debate over how far, or how crowded, sure, you might have a point, but it doesn't do this AT ALL.
Summon pulls the car forward or backward in a straight line while you are standing right beside it and actively controlling it. That functionality wasn't even mentioned in regards to summon, but what they did mention was never delivered.

2. My car exits highways. I signal to put it in the exit lane, and away it goes. It doesn't work on all highway configurations, but that should be expected.

This was never a promised feature of AP1 (or at least not before delivery)

3. Speed restrictions. Yes - I don't like this either. But Tesla didn't say that the car would would auto-drive above the legal limit. Possibly regulators had some influence here.

For the millionth time, regulators did not have ANYTHING to do with that.
As for what Tesla promised, they never said it could do over the limit, so they didn't have to deliver that. The problem is, that once they DID deliver it, they no longer had any right to remove it.

4. Nags. I also don't like this. But don't blame Tesla. Blame the idiots who decided to do blatantly idiotic things, that Tesla explicitly warned against, and then post their idiocy on youtube, or worse, to crash and then sue Tesla. I rather suspect that regulators had a large part in requiring Tesla to implement the nags.

I will blame Tesla, because they explicitly promised that the vehicle would go from on-ramp to off-ramp without touching any controls. It doesn't do that, therefore they didn't deliver on that promise.

 

[green1]

Could you please provide a link to where Tesla said that their first autopilot would do all of these things? I don't ever recall seeing it.

Claim #1: Tesla claimed that an alert driver could use the “Autopilot” feature to drive along a highway without touching any controls, as long as the driver was paying attention and ready to take over at any time.

Examples of claim:

• Elon Musk (CEO Tesla Motors) demonstrates the feature to a journalist in October 2014
  
  
• A Tesla employee demonstrates the feature to attendees at the Tesla “D” event in October 2014
  
  
• Stuff meets Elon Musk Elon Musk (CEO Tesla Motors) in an interview in March 2015 states “We want you to go from highway on-ramp to highway off-ramp, without touching the controls, in the next 12 months”
  

What Tesla has delivered: In October 2015 Tesla released a software update that enabled “Autopilot”. This included a feature called “Autosteer” which came with a disclaimer that you must keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times. If your hands were not detected exerting torque on the steering wheel at road curves, the vehicle would pop up a warning asking you to place your hands on the wheel. This warning would intensify until either you applied torque to the steering wheel, or Autopilot would be disabled. In subsequent software updates the frequency, and intensity of the popup message was increased, and if the message occurs a certain number of times per drive the feature is completely disabled for the remainder of the drive. Additionally restrictions have been placed on it such that on some roadways the speed you can travel while on autosteer is limited to what the vehicle believes the speed limit to be.


Claim #2: Tesla claimed that drivers could use the “Summon” feature (part of the “Autopilot” suite) to call the vehicle and it would drive to them wherever they were on private property. Additionally Tesla claimed that the vehicle would check your schedule and pull out of your garage and meet you at your front door on private property.

Examples of claim:

• Recording of the Tesla Motors “D” event where the “AutoPilot” functionality was initially revealed. Elon musk (CEO Tesla Motors) states at 9:55 “You’ll be able to summon the car, if you’re on private property, you have to be on private property to do it, you can actually summon the car and the car will come to wherever you are and, it will use the ultrasonic sensors kind of like an insect antenna, because it can detect even small soft objects with the ultrasonics, and it will just sort of slowly make it’s way to you and then stop and be ready to go. It can go even a step beyond that, if you have your calendar turned on, it will meet you there. So if you’re getting ready to go to work or something and it knows you’re going to need to leave half an hour before work and you say ok I’d like to just come out and have the air conditioning done and everything done, your music playing, everything just ready to go and it will just come and be there.”
  

• Model S | Tesla Motors Snapshot of the Tesla Motors website from July 16 2015, in the “Autopilot” section states “With calendar syncing enabled, Model S checks current traffic conditions to determine how much time is needed to make your first meeting of the day. At the right time, it turns on the climate control and opens the garage door. On private property, Model S will even pull out of the garage and meet you at the curb.” The image on the page implies the car backing out of a garage, turning 90 degrees and pulling forward.
  

What Tesla has delivered: In 2016 Tesla released a software update that enabled “Summon”. This allowed you to pull the vehicle forward or backward in a straight line while continuously holding a button in the smartphone app while standing no more than a few feet away from the vehicle. The feature does not include any link to the calendar, can not turn, and does not work if the key fob is more than a few feet from the vehicle.


Claim #3: Tesla claimed that the “Autopilot” feature would monitor stop signs, traffic lights, and pedestrians.

Examples of claim:

• Recording of the Tesla Motors “D” event where the “AutoPilot” functionality was initially revealed. Elon musk (CEO Tesla Motors) states at 7:20 “The next element is a camera with image recognition, so it’s able to read stop signs, distinguish pedestrians, look at traffic lights and also serve as a backup system for the radar”
  
  
• Model S | Tesla Motors Snapshot of the Tesla Motors website from July 16 2015, in the “Autopilot” section states “Standard equipment safety features are constantly monitoring stop signs, traffic signals and pedestrians, as well as for unintentional lane changes.”
  

What Tesla has delivered: The Tesla software does not react in any way, or display any information pertaining to, stop signs, traffic lights, or pedestrians.


Claim #4: Tesla claimed that Automatic Emergency Braking would bring the vehicle to a full stop in emergency situations to avoid a collision.

Examples of claim:

• Model S | Tesla Motors Snapshot of the Tesla Motors website from July 16 2015, in the “Autopilot” section states “In emergency conditions, Model S safely brings itself to a full stop.”
  
  
• http://web.archive.org/web/20151030...m/blog/your-autopilot-has-arrived?redirect=no Snapshot of the Tesla Motors website from October 30 2015, in the first paragraph states “Digital control of motors, brakes, and steering helps avoid collisions from the front and sides, as well as preventing the car from wandering off the road”
  

What Tesla has delivered: Tesla’s Automatic Emergency Braking will not avoid a collision, but only reduce the impact of an already unavoidable collision. According to the Model S manual “When a frontal collision is considered unavoidable, Automatic Emergency Braking is designed to apply the brakes to reduce the severity of the impact, even if you are already applying the brakes.” and “When Automatic Emergency Braking has reduced the driving speed by 25 mph (40 km/h), the brakes are released” and “Warning: Automatic Emergency Braking is designed to reduce the severity of an impact. It is not designed to avoid a collision.”

 

[davidc18]

Agree that Tesla is getting pretty bold in its hostility towards paying customers. Still surprised at the comments defending teslas actions.

 

[St Charles]

I still think AP1/AP2 changes are to meet pending regulatory approvals. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say that these changes are resultant to backdoor conversations between Tesla and the NHTSB and are ultimately in line with what the expected regulations will be.

But what's the motivation? Stock price. Tesla needs to land the Auto Pilot vision and NHTSB regulatory approval is going to be make or break that vision. Look at it like an investor. If Tesla AP functions exactly like the regulations stipulate then the stock price does what it will do. If they have to shut off functionality due to regulations when they come out then the stock value is virtually guaranteed to tank. Think of all the Tesla bears out there waiting to eat up a bad headline like "Tesla Auto Pilot fails regulatory approval' OR 'Tesla required to turn off AutoPilot features'.

It sucks that we are stuck in the crossfire.

 

[spooky981]

I paid for AutoPilot 1.0, enjoyed it for four months, and now its AutoPilot 0.5
At a certain level of denigration Tesla owes its buyers a refund.

 

[bhzmark]

I just did a long road trip with the latest AP1 update and it was a pleasure.

Earlier issues with lane keeping on curves, truck lust, exit diving, etc. are all much improved.

If others are thinking about further delaying the update I would recommend getting it.

Pretty amazing that no other car MFR has come close to the functionality of AP1's tech from 2014, and Tesla is getting ready to jump further ahead with AP2.

 

[GlmnAlyAirCar]

I'm not sure that I agree.

1. Summon does work. If you were expecting that the car would drive 2000 feet across a large, occupied parking lot, then that's your extrapolation - not Tesla's.

You couldn't be more wrong about this. Look at my avatar picture. It's from an April 2015 archive of the Tesla Motors web site, advertising the abilities of "summon." Not only does the text imply it would maneuver anywhere on private property, this image shows what it is expected to do. Plus, "come pick you up on private property" was mentioned at the D event.

 

[green1]

I paid for AutoPilot 1.0, enjoyed it for four months, and now its AutoPilot 0.5
At a certain level of denigration Tesla owes its buyers a refund.

That brings up some interesting quetions. At what point does a company stop owing what it promised, and start owing refunds? is it their choice? or their customers?
How much should they reimburse? just the price of the feature that wasn't delivered? or more because it was used to sell the whole car?
Is it good enough for a company to lie and then reimburse the money years later after they've been able to profit from it interest free? Do they only need to reimburse those who complain?
What is the incentive for a company to be honest in their advertising if there is no negative consequence for not doing so?

 

[Andyw2100]

At the risk of handing over a bat and pointing to a dead horse, what didn't they deliver on AP1 Andy?

@green1 has now addressed this far better than I did in his post, which is post number 66 in this thread.

I had previously shown some of the same things, though not as well, in post number 9.

Just a Place Keeper to See if I Am Right About the Future of AP1

 

[GlmnAlyAirCar]

Could you please provide a link to where Tesla said that their first autopilot would do all of these things? I don't ever recall seeing it.

On private property, Model S will even pull out of the garage and meet you at the curb (Model S | Tesla Motors). It also mentions coming to a full stop in an emergency -- this still doesn't happen with AEB.

 

[Andyw2100]

The only thing annoying was a few times when I forgot that manually taking the car over 90 with Autosteer engaged is punished with disabled Autosteer until car is parked. That rule had the desired effect and I learned my lesson and disable AP when needed to make a >90 mph pass.

I speculate that the need for that rule is that the risk and severity of accidents at high speeds is much higher and so they simply do not want people to be on auto steer at speeds above 90 which may result in a serious accident where it would be technically true (and thus reported) that the car was on autopilot.

We've discussed this extensively in another thread.

What is the reason we need to be punished? I understand autosteer will disengage above 90 MPH. It does that automatically. That's absolutely fine. No one is complaining about that. But why should we have to learn to disengage it before we hit 90, which in and of itself can be a dangerous and distracting thing to do? It should simply disengage on its own when the top limit is reached, and then allow the driver to re-engage at a slower speed.

Forcing a driver to either stop the car to re-engage, or not re-engage for the rest of the trip is punitive, and dangerous. There is no need for it.

 

[bhzmark]

We've discussed this extensively in another thread.

What is the reason we need to be punished? I understand autosteer will disengage above 90 MPH. It does that automatically. That's absolutely fine. No one is complaining about that. But why should we have to learn to disengage it before we hit 90, which in and of itself can be a dangerous and distracting thing to do? It should simply disengage on its own when the top limit is reached, and then allow the driver to re-engage at a slower speed.

Forcing a driver to either stop the car to re-engage, or not re-engage for the rest of the trip is punitive, and dangerous. There is no need for it.

I quickly edited that out rt after posting because I knew someone would quibble about it.

The main point is that current AP1 rocks. No regrets taking update.

Automatically disengaging at > 90 is not safe. That seems a pretty obvious point to me or anyone who stops to consider it.

Better to have the driver under full control and intentionally disengage to take full control and be settled before beginning their trip >90.

Quick learners won't have a problem with that. Slow learners may take a while and gripe and whine as they ascend their shallow and slow learning curve.

 

[Andyw2100]

Automatically disengaging at > 90 is not safe.

The car is going to do that anyway. No need to punish the driver for it, resulting in the rest of the trip being considerably less safe.

 

[green1]

The car is going to do that anyway. No need to punish the driver for it, resulting in the rest of the trip being considerably less safe.

Of course the other question is why the 90mph limit at all. At the D event they specifically mention that the ultrasonics work "at any speed" and mention up to the top speed of the car (155mph). But I guess that was just another Elon lie. For safety, the car should continue on AP, and not disengage at all.

 

[Canuck]

The word "mistake" implies that an action counter the goal was accidentally made. How do you know this actually happened?

I'm not prepared to imply profit as the only motive. I look at Tesla's actions as cutting edge and pressing the boundaries. Then the AP death, the NHTSA investigation, followed by the curtailing of AP functions. That's all that's needed for me to form my opinion, but it is only my opinion. However, I am of the view that nefarious motives, such as profit before ethics, should not be implied when the facts also point to an equally, if not more probable, explanation.

There is one thing and one thing only that matters - profit.

Elon Musk risked a lot of his own personal profits by going with this venture in the first place, he opens up Tesla's patents for anyone to use in good faith, he welcomes EV competition, etc, etc. Those are not the actions of the "one thing only that matters" being profits.

I realize you have strong views on this issue but it doesn't help your position to ignore relevant facts simply to fit your scenario.

 

[green1]

I do not actually believe "profit" is the motive. I believe a very misguided idea of "PR" is. They are paranoid of bad press, and have been known to very aggressively fight it in the past. Someone within Tesla decided that an AP accident would be far worse press than removing AP features, so they decided to do the latter. That doesn't make it ethical, or even legal, but that was their decision.
Unfortunately, they are putting their PR above the legal rights of their customers, above the safety of their customers, and above any ethical concerns. This is not a surprise, but it is very disappointing. I would bet Tesla would far rather see 2 deaths not on AP, than 1 death on AP. And that's the calculus they're doing by forcing people to use AP less.