Prediction: Tesla Pulls Autosteer Function Soon

[Troy]

Tesla could have done things a lot better. On this page there are videos created by Tesla:
Support | Tesla Motors

6 minutes video about Detailed Charging Walkthrough
3 minutes video about Seat and Window Controls
4 minutes video about Rear Facing Seats
4 minutes video about Roof Rack Installation

Why is there no video about auto lane change and auto steer? Why not make people watch a 3 minute video on Tesla website and enter a pin before activating autopilot? Compared to other car manufacturers, Tesla is in a unique position because they can easily communicate to all Tesla drivers through email (mytesla account) or the Tesla app or the touchscreen.

In this video at 1:34 the MS almost got rear ended because the driver doesn't understand that the car can't see behind. He initiates auto lane change when there is another car next to him to demonstrate it won't change lanes. This works correctly because the car next to him is within the 16 feet ultrasonics range. But as soon as that car clears, the MS starts changing lanes and it can't see the other car that is coming behind. Then when the other car comes within range, it beeps and the driver takes over. In this instance an accident was avoided just by luck because the car behind was able to slow down in time.

Auto lane change is often misunderstood because statements like these:

Screenshot source: Tesla website Model S page. (The page has changed now)

Screenshot source 15 Oct 2015

The car can't see behind more than 16 feet but people incorrectly assume it can. Even Tesla's own test driver misunderstood auto lane change. Quote: "It's gonna change the lane for me. It looks of course". Source: video at 1:12

What Tesla says:
"Engage the turn signal and Model S will move itself to the adjacent lane when it’s safe to do so." Source

The correct information:
Engage the turn signal and Model S will move itself to the adjacent lane regardless whether it's safe or not because it can't see behind more than 16 feet, so you better check yourself.

How Tesla could have phrased the correct information:
Before initiating an auto lane change, always make sure there are no vehicles approaching at higher speed on the target lane outside the 16 feet ultrasonic sensor range the car is able to detect.

As usual, Tesla marketing team is exaggerating things. They don't mention the 16 feet limitation at all and they make it look like that car can see behind. "When it’s safe to do so" is an incorrect statement. "When it’s safe to do so as long as the other car is within 16 feet range" would be correct.

 

[jeff_adams]

Darwin Award winners drive many types of cars. It's safe to assume a few will be driving Teslas.

 

[Bill r]

Tried autopilot from Seattle to park city. Had a problem while driving in the right hand lane. Auto stearing wanted to vear towards the exit road. It took a tight grip on the stearing wheel. This problem needs to be addressed..

 

[Johan]

Tried autopilot from Seattle to park city. Had a problem while driving in the right hand lane. Auto stearing wanted to vear towards the exit road. It took a tight grip on the stearing wheel. This problem needs to be addressed..

Seen reports like your's several places. In this situation AP should disengage and alert the driver to take control, since the car obviously gets unsure whether to follow the road or take the exit.

Future updates where destination can be plotted will solve this, largely.

 

[ar4c]

Auto steer did the same thing to me today, jerked right to take an exit when I was in the right lane- no notifications, alerts - anything! It took a right turn as a car was quickly exciting and I would have cut him off. The driver also flipped me off as it gave the impression I was merging into his exit when I wasn't so it startled him. It has a long way to go.

On a side note, my car is rattling so bad I am getting tired of it.. rattles from 4 different locations, and passengers always comment on it. Decided to give my service center a call to schedule an appointment to fix.. unbelievable..6.5 WEEKS is the earliest they can get me in for an appointment as they are slammed. I asked what happens when the Model X comes out, they said "We have no idea, but it wont be pretty".

Seriously, Tesla is growing for their own good and IN MY OPINION rushing unfinished products to the market. How Autosteer is still in Beta after a year of its announcement is beyond me. I am really hoping competitors step up their electric vehicle offerings, because I wont be buying another Tesla if the snowball keeps rolling down hill.

 

[flyhigh123]

the name " auto pilot" was the 1st mistake. It should be "Assisted Pilot". Calling it auto pilot makes many people assume it truly is automatic. This perception will cause accidents as the driver will say " i didn't know, it said auto pilot"

 

[Super_Popular]

IN MY OPINION rushing unfinished products to the market.

Then I would suggest you stop using the features that you feel are unfinished...right?

 

[EchoDelta]

Not possible.

Seems like a very definite statement. I'd say very possible within 99.99% the moment you have the whole fleet recording all your driving.
One thing is true- AP now is the worse it will ever be. I hope we go through the ramp up of the exponential quality with little incidents, for the industry and safety's sake

- - - Updated - - -

Seen reports like your's several places. In this situation AP should disengage and alert the driver to take control, since the car obviously gets unsure whether to follow the road or take the exit.

Future updates where destination can be plotted will solve this, largely.

If it were me, I'd add a 'thumbs down' 'smack' or 'exclamation' button where you can flag an incident for tesla AP algorithms to learn from. In machine learning I have found these human in the loop assists for supervised teaching very important to flag these truly 'teachable moments'. Just one button, eg on the steering wheel. Then you let big data do the rest and figure out what about the moment was teachable.
You want to teach about the instances - which is solved by better mapping and clustering of behavior as you mention around specific locations - but also about the classes/patterns in the wild world.

For those interested in the sort of systems that succeed at this I recommend Taleb's latest book 'Antifragile' - about systems that go beyond resilience and don't just bounce back , but get better with stressors.

 

[Johan]

Seems like a very definite statement. I'd say very possible within 99.99% the moment you have the whole fleet recording all your driving.
One thing is true- AP now is the worse it will ever be. I hope we go through the ramp up of the exponential quality with little incidents, for the industry and safety's sake

- - - Updated - - -



If it were me, I'd add a 'thumbs down' 'smack' or 'exclamation' button where you can flag an incident for tesla AP algorithms to learn from. In machine learning I have found these human in the loop assists for supervised teaching very important to flag these truly 'teachable moments'. Just one button, eg on the steering wheel. Then you let big data do the rest and figure out what about the moment was teachable.
You want to teach about the instances - which is solved by better mapping and clustering of behavior as you mention around specific locations - but also about the classes/patterns in the wild world.

For those interested in the sort of systems that succeed at this I recommend Taleb's latest book 'Antifragile' - about systems that go beyond resilience and don't just bounce back , but get better with stressors.

Hold the voice control, say "bug report" then state what went wrong. Goes straight to the software engineers, reportedly.

 

[AlMc]

Hold the voice control, say "bug report" then state what went wrong. Goes straight to the software engineers, reportedly.

Correct

 

[tezzla]

Tried autopilot from Seattle to park city. Had a problem while driving in the right hand lane. Auto stearing wanted to vear towards the exit road. It took a tight grip on the stearing wheel. This problem needs to be addressed..

So what you're saying is: in the right lane it wants to veer right on the exits.

Okay, that took 2 seconds, now you know not to use it in the right lane or be ready for the same thing to happen. Okay, now you've learned a lesson.

See how that works? It's not a big deal and the sky is not falling.

 

[eloder]

Seriously, Tesla is growing for their own good and IN MY OPINION rushing unfinished products to the market. How Autosteer is still in Beta after a year of its announcement is beyond me. I am really hoping competitors step up their electric vehicle offerings, because I wont be buying another Tesla if the snowball keeps rolling down hill.

Uses a feature that's 3 years ahead of competitors.

Complains that it's not 10 years ahead of competitors?

Sure, AP will require improvement. But it's pretty incredible from everything I see here given how primitive the sensors are that they use, v. $75k Lidar and tools used by other cars that come remotely close to this level of self-control on a car.

If you're not happy with a Tesla, then vote with your wallet. I'm not sure why people use products that they aren't happy with.

Auto lane change is often misunderstood because statements like these:

As someone who works tech support, I can point out many dozens of heavy exaggerations on Apple's site about functionality found on their phones and products that don't quite match real life.

Welcome to being a consumer. That's why advertising with every company is always different than when you look through the full details. Why aren't taxes and surcharges and equipment costs advertised with phone plan prices? Why don't Windows 10 advertisements mention that the system can potentially crash at critical times? Why doesn't McDonald's warn consumers how unhealthy their meals are? Why single Tesla out on something that everyone does?

Companies that fully disclose and go over everything upfront in advertising space go bankrupt and out of business, and of story.

 

[doctorwho]

It's a 1.0 release, how many 1.0 releases of anything are a mature fully functional error free product? Let's have realistic expectations here.

 

[ar4c]

Uses a feature that's 3 years ahead of competitors.

Complains that it's not 10 years ahead of competitors?

Sure, AP will require improvement. But it's pretty incredible from everything I see here given how primitive the sensors are that they use, v. $75k Lidar and tools used by other cars that come remotely close to this level of self-control on a car.

If you're not happy with a Tesla, then vote with your wallet. I'm not sure why people use products that they aren't happy with.



As someone who works tech support, I can point out many dozens of heavy exaggerations on Apple's site about functionality found on their phones and products that don't quite match real life.

Welcome to being a consumer. That's why advertising with every company is always different than when you look through the full details. Why aren't taxes and surcharges and equipment costs advertised with phone plan prices? Why don't Windows 10 advertisements mention that the system can potentially crash at critical times? Why doesn't McDonald's warn consumers how unhealthy their meals are? Why single Tesla out on something that everyone does?

Companies that fully disclose and go over everything upfront in advertising space go bankrupt and out of business, and of story.

I see you own a Leaf, and not a Tesla.. Can you please tell us more about this subject? I'd like to hear more information about a Tesla from a Nissan owner.

 

[dsm363]

I see you own a Leaf, and not a Tesla.. Can you please tell us more about this subject? I'd like to hear more information about a Tesla from a Nissan owner.

Mode note: You really need to check your attitude. A leaf owner is perfectly able to comment on this.

 

[breser]

Why is there no video about auto lane change and auto steer? Why not make people watch a 3 minute video on Tesla website and enter a pin before activating autopilot?

No thanks. I came from a car with it's nanny "I Agree" button on the navigation screen on every start. Where the passenger couldn't enter an address in the navigation system while the car was in motion. Tesla has avoided all of this sort of nonsense by treating owners like adults and leaving choices up to us.

All sorts of dangerous equipment comes with a text manual and no video to watch to learn how to operate it. The vast majority of people can manage to read the manual and operate it without making catastrophic mistakes. As far as I'm aware there still isn't a report of an autopilot crashes. Lots of "near crash" videos, largely being made by people being stupid in the process of making a video (it's depressing how many people are holding cameras while operating autopilot). But still no actual crashes.

Hate to break it to all of you guys but near crashes happen every day by people operating cars without any sort of autopilot. None of us have enough data to say if Autopilot is causing more of these sorts of incidents. So none of us have enough information to know if any sort of extraordinary measure needs to be taking. But so far it's my opinion that Tesla should keep treating their owners like adults.

 

[Max*]

No thanks. I came from a car with it's nanny "I Agree" button on the navigation screen on every start. Where the passenger couldn't enter an address in the navigation system while the car was in motion. Tesla has avoided all of this sort of nonsense by treating owners like adults and leaving choices up to us.

All sorts of dangerous equipment comes with a text manual and no video to watch to learn how to operate it. The vast majority of people can manage to read the manual and operate it without making catastrophic mistakes. As far as I'm aware there still isn't a report of an autopilot crashes. Lots of "near crash" videos, largely being made by people being stupid in the process of making a video (it's depressing how many people are holding cameras while operating autopilot). But still no actual crashes.

Hate to break it to all of you guys but near crashes happen every day by people operating cars without any sort of autopilot. None of us have enough data to say if Autopilot is causing more of these sorts of incidents. So none of us have enough information to know if any sort of extraordinary measure needs to be taking. But so far it's my opinion that Tesla should keep treating their owners like adults.

Completely agreed.

 

[Vitold]

No thanks. I came from a car with it's nanny "I Agree" button on the navigation screen on every start. Where the passenger couldn't enter an address in the navigation system while the car was in motion. Tesla has avoided all of this sort of nonsense by treating owners like adults and leaving choices up to us.

All sorts of dangerous equipment comes with a text manual and no video to watch to learn how to operate it. The vast majority of people can manage to read the manual and operate it without making catastrophic mistakes. As far as I'm aware there still isn't a report of an autopilot crashes. Lots of "near crash" videos, largely being made by people being stupid in the process of making a video (it's depressing how many people are holding cameras while operating autopilot). But still no actual crashes.

Hate to break it to all of you guys but near crashes happen every day by people operating cars without any sort of autopilot. None of us have enough data to say if Autopilot is causing more of these sorts of incidents. So none of us have enough information to know if any sort of extraordinary measure needs to be taking. But so far it's my opinion that Tesla should keep treating their owners like adults.

Your analogy fails because where people have a choice to do dangerous things (and the danger is well defined) drivers don't have a choice what Autopilot does nor they can predict when Autopilot will fail them.

People relinquish their driving to AutoPilot - it's Tesla that programs AP's behavior and they should restrict it where it does not perform well.

 

[Max*]

Your analogy fails because where people have a choice to do dangerous things (and the danger is well defined) drivers don't have a choice what Autopilot does nor they can predict when Autopilot will fail them.

People relinquish their driving to AutoPilot - it's Tesla that programs AP's behavior and they should restrict it where it does not perform well.

The driver is in control at all times. You're not supposed to relinquish control to AP. You're supposed to be aware of your surroundings.

And when AP does something stupid, you need to have enough time to react and fix it's behavior. For some people that might imply following the rules to a T, and keeping your hands on the wheel. For others, they may feel more comfortable and keep their hands on their laps/etc.

 

[Vitold]

And when AP does something stupid, you need to have enough time to react and fix it's behavior.

I agree. That's why I don't think it should be engaged in all situations and Tesla knows the best which situations those are.