Kinda crapped on the Lucid relative to EQS, and was reasonably critical about the brakes. Car is so ugly tho. Reminds me of something equally ugly but just can’t place it. Saturn?
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Mercedes-Benz receives world's first internationally valid system approval for conditionally automated driving
- Thread starter MrBadger
- Start date
Cheburashka
Active Member
People who say this is like "FSD" or AP1 really don't get it.
You can take your eyes off the road. Legally. That's a major benefit and a game changer.
Something no Tesla has ever been capable of and probably won't be able to do in the near future either.
You can take your eyes off the road. Legally. That's a major benefit and a game changer.
Something no Tesla has ever been capable of and probably won't be able to do in the near future either.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
Define types of ODD and categorize L2 and L3 better. We have been through this discussion before.
It’s SAE’s fault they can’t come up with practical, useful definitions.
Tam
Well-Known Member
To be fair, the Mercedes Level 3 speed limit maximum of 60 km/hour or 37 miles/hour seems to be useless since I am already upset that my newly modern radarless pure vision car's Autopilot speed is decreased from 90 MPH to 80 MPH.
On the other hand, the deadliest time of the day is from 13:00 to 18:59 when workers are hurry to drive back home and they encounter huge congestion, stop-and-go or slow traffic, which could lead to from frustration, to boredom, to talking/playing on the phone, distracted by other activities and not paying attention to the task of driving because after all, what's the big deal about 37 miles/hour:
So although 37 miles/hour seems to be not much, it's a start. I could be distracted, texting, playing video games (the way Tesla drivers already boasting on Youtube), and if there's an accident, about 54 countries with the pact of UN Regulation No. 157 will not hold the humans in the car responsible but they will hold the engineers and the manufacturers accountable for disturbing the owner's in-car arcade game.
Also, please note that when the car is exiting from L3 (the stop-and-go traffic starts to pick up the speed and will exceed 37 miles/hour soon), the system would hand over the L2 function to humans so the humans could stop playing the arcade game and start driving again, not totally manually but with the ADAS L2.
With ADAS L2 above 37 miles/hours, humans in the car are now responsible for the operation and will be held responsible if anything goes wrong (the same way Tesla owners are being held responsible with its L2 Autopilot and FSD).
In summary, it has all the L2 features that Tesla has but the accidents will be covered by the manufacturers when L3 is active (37 miles/hour or below) only in 54 countries that have the UN Regulation No. 157 pact which is not the US currently).
No, it (taking of respondibility) is the difference between Tesla L2 FSD Beta and Japan/EU L3. There is, as yet, no Tesla L5 FSD. This is both a statement of present engineering capability and a deliberate developmental strategy on Tesla's part.
Who Takes Responsibility is sreadily (and correctly IMO) becoming the acid test of L0/1/2 (increasingly sophisticated Sipervised Assistance) vs L3/4/5 (increasingly-wide domain of Unsupervised Autonomy).
In terms of operational ability, this MB system is no better then present autopilot (or a number of other traffic-jam L2-copilot systems) in a highway traffic jam scenario.
The distinction here is that while the traffic jam continues, the driver is allowed to stop supervising - stop paying attention, no need to look at the road or hold the wheel. So yes it is technically L3 and they are making hay over that. However as noted the maximum speed is quite low (37mph on the famed super-speed Autobahn). In my experience, these highway traffic jams can come and go with at least brief periods of higher speed driving between slowdowns. In such typical situations, you will be called to attention to take over fairly often, but it's undeniably more relaxing to be able to look away, use your phone, daydream or whatever during the traffic jam itself.
I think most here would agree that Tesla cars can technically do this kind of thing no problem, and that's been true for a few years. So what has stopped them from claiming World's First L3, ahead of MB? Im not sure, but my guess would be the following points:
- Not being ready to make the huge leap into the milieu of insurance claims logistics. Though Tesla seems actually further ahead in this (having their own insurance product) compared to non-insurance-provider automakers, still it's a major step to set up that L3+ coverage infrastructure, and most owners don't have it or can't get it yet. So Tesla is clearly moving to do so at the right time, but I'd guess the limited ODD of intermittent traffic jams isn't worth the consequences of triggering this whole infrastructure.
- Sorry if I missed some reference to MB partnering with an insurance company regarding this issue.
- Due to Elon's far more ambitious (yet unrealizrd) FSD goals, and due to the hostility Tesla experiences in press coverage, the rollout of such a severely limited L3 feature is likely to be derided, be seen as an admission of FSD failure and a betrayal of FSD customers. Optimistically it could be interpreted as a great step on the way to future higher automation, but optimism doesn't usually win out in Tesla's public perception these days. MB will probably get that positive spin that Tesla wouldn't. And I see the same is true here on the forum.
- As a corollary to the point above, it may be easier for MB to win regulatory cooperation which will help Tesla in the long run, but which Tesla might not be able to win for itself if it were pioneering he exact same path.
I agree with many of your comments in this latest post regarding the limited benefit and the (to me) problematic situation around constant switching between L2 and L3 responsibility. But not with this comment. MB does not, as far as I can tell, have all the L2 features that Tesla has.
Tesla L2 autopilot is far more functional in highway and especially the non-highway ODD than any other system that you can buy in a new car today. I am not speaking of FSD beta aka Autosteer on City Streets, but of standard Autopilot and also the paid-FSD additions, i.e. NOA and the somewhat-derided Traffic Light & Stop Sign Control which I find extremely beneficial.
As I said in the previous message, the low-speed, highway-only traffic-jam-following capability, that MB is using as the basis for its L3 milestone achievement, is something that Tesla has been able to do, probably better, for years. The only difference is that Tesla has not taken the step of making it an unsupervised L3 with the associated legal insurance coverage support.
I don't think it's a massive assumption that all of these companies have autonomous systems capable of attempting complex maneuvers when vehicles were attempting them back in 2016, the biggest distinction here is that Tesla allows their consumer vehicles to attempt them while calling the systems Level 2 and making the driver responsible. The other companies are generally far more conservative in their approach and lean more towards offering simpler systems with narrower functions aiming for higher SAE levels.
Mercedes is partnered with NVIDIA and uses their Drive system, you can find heavily edited and curated videos of it doing FSD Beta-like stuff
Now I'm not quite suggesting NVIDIA's / Mercedes' system would do as well in these maneuvers, although who knows what point each system is at, but I have no doubt all of them are capable of attempting similar stuff. And I think you'd find capabilities across the systems is much closer than it appears in the public realm.
I personally don't care much about what a vehicle will attempt if I need to supervise it, but I'll give money to whoever gets Level 3+ autonomy and sells it at a price that makes sense for the value it'll add by allowing me to focus on other stuff as it drives in its defined ODD. If Tesla puts out a Level 3+ highway system that will do my 10hr highway drives while I work or surf the web or whatever, I'm there. If Mercedes does it, I'm there.
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EVNow
Well-Known Member
You are truly an outlier. You drive 36k miles a year - and the average is 15k.
But I agree that having an actual L3 system that covers freeways would be of great help. Supporting full speed on freeways (and doing needed lane changes) - basically like NOA, but truly handsfree would be a game changer for a lot of people. But there isn't one at this point. But this Mercedes system is not it. That is what I'm talking about.
What I'd like to see is a new regulation from UN that defines this ODD. UN-R157 is of limited (almost trivial) use. Since SAE has abdicated their role in creating useful and practical standards, I guess we'll have to now look to UN and other agencies.
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EVNow
Well-Known Member
Not so fast
You are in a traffic jam on freeways and the going speed is 35 mph. So the manufacturer is responsible. The speed changes and the car can now go at 40 mph - and suddenly you are responsible.
How confusing is that ?
And people crib about 80 mph limit of vision AP.
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
I don't see how it's confusing to you that a self-driving car may only work reliably under some conditions.Not so fast
You are in a traffic jam on freeways and the going speed is 35 mph. So the manufacturer is responsible. The speed changes and the car can now go at 40 mph - and suddenly you are responsible.
How confusing is that ?
And people crib about 80 mph limit of vision AP.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
It is absolutely confusing to the driver if it works at 36 mph in a traffic jam but not 38 mph in the same traffic jam.
The reason it is confusing is that the transition is arbitrary and not tied to - say max allowed speed on the freeway. Also much below the usual speeds on freeway.
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
I guess we'll have to see how confusing it is. You may be more confused than the vast majority of people or I may be less confused. Hard to say. To me if the car says "I can no longer drive safely at the speed of traffic, you are now responsible for driving" that is not confusing at all. Obviously it also has all the attention monitoring stuff too and will turn off the video playing on the dashboard.
Having a low speed highway system seems like a good stepping stone to eventually having a system that works at the speed limit. Maybe it won't work and will cause a bunch of collisions due to mode confusion, we'll see.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
Its nothing to do with you or me. Don't make it personal. Just use common sense.
brucet999
Active Member
Effectively less than my 2015 MS 70 with Autopilot hardware version 1
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
Since we have zero safety data we're both using our personal common sense to predict how confusing it will be.
I think people will be able to understand that a self-driving mode may only work under certain circumstances.
I see other Tesla owners talking about how they learn when to "trust" Autopilot (which is of course a horrible idea). It seems to me that a system that tells you when you can trust it would work better than that.
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