Poll: 81% of Prospective Model 3 Owners Say They Won’t Pay Upfront For Full Self-Driving

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It seems most prospective Model 3 owners aren’t willing to shell out cash upfront for a $3,000 “full self-driving capability” option that is likely years away from becoming available to engage.

In a poll posted by jsraw 81.3% (347) of respondents said they will not pay for the feature at purchase. Adding the option later will cost an additional $1,000. Of respondents, 18.7% said they will pay for FSD upfront.

According to Tesla’s website, FSD “doubles the number of active cameras from four to eight, enabling full self-driving in almost all circumstances, at what we believe will be a probability of safety at least twice as good as the average human driver. The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat. For Superchargers that have automatic charge connection enabled, you will not even need to plug in your vehicle.”

Elon Musk has said that level 5 autonomous driving is possible with second generation Autopilot and the FSD option, meaning the car is fully autonomous in any and all conditions. During his TED talk in April, Musk said the company plans to conduct by the end of 2017 a coast-to-coast demo drive from California to New York without the driver touching the wheel.

Obviously, there will be regulatory hurdles ahead and Musk has said it will likely be two years before owners will be able to engage FSD capability.

See a few comments on the poll below, or go to the thread here.

Swift

EinSV

jason1466

Waiting4M3

Enginerd[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

 

[JeffK]

Wonder how long it will be before aftermarket driving aids show up on the market, that work in any car?

MobilEye selling a windshield stick-on kit with cameras and wires into control buses on the car.. and there you have it: emergency assist braking, distance following cruise control, etc..

Already, some dashcams have built-in road line marker following feature that bleep when you wander out of your lane. These are so annoying because they're not smart enough to "know" (read that you are signaling) you want to make an intentional lane change. Serves as a proof of technology of what I'm talking about.

The more and better these after market systems integrate into the car, the more functional and desirable they become.

I wonder how long it will take for regulators to demand the "opening up" of car control interfaces on a port. Much like OBD/II plugs were forced into cars to allow any shop to service and maintain all that new fangled emissions stuff.

I doubt this will happen anytime soon as evidenced by the failure of comma ai to not only submit documents but it never scaled to multiple types of cars.

Why in the world do they need to send camera feeds to do fleet learning? Nobody ever said anything about streaming raw data to Tesla and having them analyze it there. There are a gazillion ways they can be sending data from the cars that promotes fleet learning that doesn't involve sending camera feeds, and distributed processing of the data in the cars is a hugely more efficient way to solve the problem.

Often training is more effective with short clips of real data.
Tesla updates data sharing policy to include collecting video in order to ‘make self-driving a reality’

Keep in mind you have a choice to opt out.

We are working hard to improve autonomous safety features and make self-driving a reality for you as soon as possible.

In order to do so, we need to collect short video clips using the car’s external cameras to learn how to recognize things like lane lines, street signs, and traffic light positions. The more fleet learning of road conditions we are able to do, the better your Tesla’s self-driving ability will become.

We want to be super clear that these short video clips are not linked to your vehicle identification number. In order to protect your privacy, we have ensured that there is no way to search our system for clips that are associated with a specific car.

In order for these features to work, Tesla measures the road segment data of all participating vehicles but in a way that does not identify you or your car, and may share that with partners that contribute similar data to help us provide the service. At no point is any personally identifiable information collected or shared during the process.

* note how they qualified "external cameras" before the Model 3 reveal

 

[oktane]

I've give the benefit of the doubt that @oktane is simply grossly misinformed and not merely a troll or has other psychological issues.

Perhaps @oktane keeps forgetting a /sarcasm tag or to add a smiley.

We know for a fact that Tesla sends back information and we even know what that information is, as it's been posted on the TMC forums.

I'd say you need to get out the introspectiscope or at least stop pretending it's opposite day!

There is zero chance 8 video feeds are being sent to the mothership every night. No fleet learning going on, at least not from our consumer cars.

 

[JeffK]

I'd say you need to get out the introspectiscope or at least stop pretending it's opposite day!

There is zero chance 8 video feeds are being sent to the mothership every night. No fleet learning going on, at least not from our consumer cars.

No one said feeds... short clips
AP2.0 Cameras: Capabilities and Limitations?

 

[oktane]

No one said feeds... short clips
AP2.0 Cameras: Capabilities and Limitations?

Same difference. Clips of what and when?

 

[JeffK]

Same difference. Clips of what and when?

It's random, but as stated each tarball sent home contains:

• timestamp (not sure of the format, possibly usec from system boot?) , vehicle type, AP board id, whenever you have a developer car or not, serial number of the snapshot (They are numbered so you can know how many were taken by your car), some sha1 hash, snapshot format version (currently 0.3). - in archive_info.json

• raw sensor dumps from 7 B&W cameras - 10 images, once per seconds each. (so basically 1fps 10 seconds clip)

• for main and narrow cams: 10 seconds of images at 30fps (so 300 images in total each) compressed with .h265 (if the filename is to be believed), one frame per file, no headers or anything, so any suggestions on how to display that would be useful.

• Calibration data for main and narrow cameras.

• For main and narrow cams every image (620 in total) is accompanied by radar snapshot.

• image and radar dump filenames are the timestamp when it was taken (usec from boot?)

• can bus dump of some sort.

Also according to @verygreen

about 160M for the one I intercepted.
They do appear to be uploading while driving, so the ones transferred from the garage on wifi are likely of the garage,
unless the cell connection was slow or one was generated very shortly before returning.

So they may transfer via cell in addition to wifi.

Like I said before, though, people can opt out

He's posted a few of those frame grabs in that thread as well.

 

[Swift]

For your reference, here is a link to the FSD thread in the Model S forum: Elon, Where is the FSD features you promised?

I think you'll find it highly relevant to this discussion.

 

[insaneoctane]

Is there really a question as to whether Tesla is using the fleet data to improve the AI? Isn't this neural network 101? I think your proof is exactly counter to @scottm 's wishes: ALL cars have the hardware now. You can not delete it. Because even without you selecting EAP or FSD, Tesla can still learn from your vehicle. Now, is there a point in the future when EAP or FSD doesn't behave as expected and you click somewhere on the touchscreen to report the behavior...and additional raw data is sent to "the mother ship" for analysis and, more importantly, correction? Seems likely. I can't predict when FSD starts to work, but once it does I can assure you the $4K upgrade will most certainly be something in the past!

 

[JeffK]

I can assure you the $4K upgrade will most certainly be something in the past!

This is why I'm thinking once FSD is perfected they may do away with EAP in the long run.

 

[JeffK]

For your reference, here is a link to the FSD thread in the Model S forum: Elon, Where is the FSD features you promised?
I think you'll find it highly relevant to this discussion.

I see that the OP is bladerskb... He loves Volvo and hates on autopilot in many threads haha

 

[insaneoctane]

This is why I'm thinking once FSD is perfected they may do away with EAP in the long run.

Hmmm. Maybe in the long, long run, but until FSD is standard/common place, I see offering EAP and FSD as a way for Tesla to extract the most money for their products. As long as there are a significant amount of people who don't want FSD, but want cruise control on steroids, EAP has financial viability...

 

[diplomat33]

This is why I'm thinking once FSD is perfected they may do away with EAP in the long run.

Yeah, I think so too. Once FSD is perfected, there won't really be a need anymore for EAP since FSD can do everything EAP does and more. And I am thinking that Tesla will make FSD something you can turn on or off via the gear stalk like how AP works now. So instead of one tap for TAAC and 2 taps for full Autopilot, it will just be 1 tap to turn FSD on/off. So, you either drive yourself or let the car drive itself.

 

[Swift]

I see that the OP is bladerskb... He loves Volvo and hates on autopilot in many threads haha

I don't know him, but cc'ing @Bladerskb since you referenced him here. All he did was post Elon's tweets and ask for status. I'm sure anybody who paid the $3,000 or bought the vehicle based on that feature had the same question. In addition to @Bladerskb, there are plenty of other long-term, well-known posters/customers chiming in on that thread.

I'm now convinced that you work for Tesla or are heavily invested in the stock. It blinds you from having a balanced discussion on anything that might be perceived as negative to Tesla. This might be the first time I use the Ignore user feature in this forum.

Again this is a useful link re the commitments Elon made re FSD earlier this year and the reaction of the community: Elon, Where is the FSD features you promised?

 

[JeffK]

I don't know him, but cc'ing @Bladerskb since you referenced him here. All he did was post Elon's tweets and ask for status. I'm sure anybody who paid the $3,000 or bought the vehicle based on that feature had the same question. In addition to @Bladerskb, there are plenty of other long-term, well-known posters/customers chiming in on that thread.

I'm now convinced that you work for Tesla or are heavily invested in the stock. It blinds you from having a balanced discussion on anything that might be perceived as negative to Tesla. This might be the first time I use the Ignore user feature in this forum.

Again this is a useful link re the commitments Elon made re FSD earlier this year and the reaction of the community: Elon, Where is the FSD features you promised?

You're mixing up commitments with wild optimistic guesses.

It's difficult to preface every tweet with "we will discuss our business outlook, make some forward-looking statements. These are all based on our predictions and expectations as of today. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC."

 

[verygreen]

It's random, but as stated each tarball sent home contains:


Also according to @verygreen


So they may transfer via cell in addition to wifi.

I take that back. it looks like the snapshots with pictures are not sent over cell, only wifi. there's also an expiration for how long it tries before deleting.
I just had some cases where car decided not to send anything to mothership after takign a snapshot that I mistook for being transmitted over wifi.
All of this might change of course.

Also the "AP board id" that's transmitted changes every boot (but I think they can still correlate it back to you because it's reported in other ways that might be less anonymous).

 

[gregincal]

Often training is more effective with short clips of real data.
Tesla updates data sharing policy to include collecting video in order to ‘make self-driving a reality’

Keep in mind you have a choice to opt out.

Short clips is not feeds. Sorry if it seemed like I was implying they never sent any video. The point I was trying to make is that they don't just send a ton of raw data to get analyzed back at the mothership. The FSD controller on the car is always analyzing the data and identifying situations where it is confused, and sending that information back to Tesla so they can improve the algorithm.

 

[verygreen]

Short clips is not feeds. Sorry if it seemed like I was implying they never sent any video. The point I was trying to make is that they don't just send a ton of raw data to get analyzed back at the mothership. The FSD controller on the car is always analyzing the data and identifying situations where it is confused, and sending that information back to Tesla so they can improve the algorithm.

They don't.
At least I never saw anything of the sort. Or I guess I drove 500 miles, had an FCW triggered, but the car was never confused in that time?
They regularly send logs and camera calibration information - that's true.

Keeo in min the "FSD controller" consists of two parts. The neural net for object recognition, and the actual control logic. When neural net cannot recognize something, you never know.

 

[oktane]

It's random, but as stated each tarball sent home contains:


Also according to @verygreen


So they may transfer via cell in addition to wifi.

Like I said before, though, people can opt out

He's posted a few of those frame grabs in that thread as well.

Great post, thanks for sharing. Glad there is at least some data being sent to the mothership. Maybe there is some hope of FSD? I just don't know anymore. My gut feeling is it will never happen, call me a pessimist.

 

[AceSkywalker]

One thing Tesla should consider is pay-per-use.

Get away from making people pay up for assets and promises that are non-functional and depreciating.

Instead, Tesla "simply" rolls out self-driving and starts demonstrating it. THEN offering everyone a "5 cents per mile" usage fee for whenever the driver chooses to use it. It serves as a motivator for them to develop it.

Following a cloud-computing model... DaaS Driving as a Service

No, not another "as a service" that I'll have to subscribe for or pay per use. I don't like the trend of ALL software becoming a subscription service versus pay once for the life of the product.

 

[JeffK]

Safety as a service ... stop paying your bills and your car steers into a wall.

no thanks

 

[EVNow]

My ICE has creep... moves without hitting the accelerator.

There's also a difference between FSD with a human in the driver's seat vs FSD with no one in the car.

You have to look at the actual wording (creep may be called out as an exception). My information comes from numerous WSJ podcasts and an interview with federal director in charge (last year).