Production rate reveal... and a new announcement?

[Zaphod]

The death was the result of the car running head on into a guard rail while in AP. I highly doubt any AP level 5 will ever be approved without Lidar. Cameras are too limited to be the only information source. The combination of both Lidar and Cameras are needed to be safe. Lidar would of seen the victim of the UBER death long before any camera could of identified the danger. It would of also added information about the road in the Tesla death that may of saved the drivers life.

The bar will be held much higher for any self driving car than for a person. Even though the stats show humans are much more likely to cause an accident. The public has no appetite for a machine killing someone but will tolerate a person killing someone in a car accident.

Umm, Uber had LiDAR on that car, albeit just one roof mounted which created blind spots around the perimeter of the car.

 

[TT97]

The death was the result of the car running head on into a guard rail while in AP. I highly doubt any AP level 5 will ever be approved without Lidar. Cameras are too limited to be the only information source. The combination of both Lidar and Cameras are needed to be safe. Lidar would of seen the victim of the UBER death long before any camera could of identified the danger. It would of also added information about the road in the Tesla death that may of saved the drivers life.

The bar will be held much higher for any self driving car than for a person. Even though the stats show humans are much more likely to cause an accident. The public has no appetite for a machine killing someone but will tolerate a person killing someone in a car accident.

The Uber Volvo does have LIDAR. I believe all XC90s also come with "City Safety" pedestrian detection system that should have warned the driver and applied the brakes - not sure if this was disengaged by Uber.

In addition to cameras, Tesla also uses radar and ultrasonic sensors.

 

[Moderatefan]

Cameras are too limited to be the only information source.

Like Musk says, all you have in your eyes is just cameras and that's enough. All the radar stuff is secondary until the technology to process images is mature, but is not really needed.

 

[omgwtfbyobbq]

I imagine he's smart enough not to use the world "promise" when he is effectively making a promise by saying something will be delivered at a certain date and time and in a certain condition.

OK. That's a difference I've noticed too. Some people, myself included, interpret statements like that as objectives, not promises. Other people, like my wife and yourself, interpret statements like that as promises, which is understandable, but it might not be what Elon meant.

 

[voip-ninja]

OK. That's a difference I've noticed too. Some people, myself included, interpret statements like that as objectives, not promises. Other people, like my wife and yourself, interpret statements like that as promises, which is understandable, but it might not be what Elon meant.

If my boss asks me when the engineering work on a project is going to be done and I say "It will be done by the end of the month", that is effectively a promise from me that the work will be completed at that time.

If I said "i hope to be completed by the end of the month, if all goes well" then that's effectively what Elon is saying, except he never says "I hope" or "if all goes well".

I do agree with you that different people can interpret these same statements in different ways, but I don't know of any other CEOs that are able to make the statements he does, fail to deliver and get a pass over and over again.

 

[adaptabl]

The Uber Volvo does have LIDAR. I believe all XC90s also come with "City Safety" pedestrian detection system that should have warned the driver and applied the brakes - not sure if this was disengaged by Uber.

In addition to cameras, Tesla also uses radar and ultrasonic sensors.

Tesla is camera based no lidar on Tesla's.

The Uber Volvo does have LIDAR. I believe all XC90s also come with "City Safety" pedestrian detection system that should have warned the driver and applied the brakes - not sure if this was disengaged by Uber.

In addition to cameras, Tesla also uses radar and ultrasonic sensors.

Tesla does not use Lidar.

 

[adaptabl]

Like Musk says, all you have in your eyes is just cameras and that's enough. All the radar stuff is secondary until the technology to process images is mature, but is not really needed.

Cameras do not work in fog and poor weather and are limited in low light. That will not be safe for level 5. People complain when a satellite service goes out in bad weather. I don't think many will be happy when the car stops dead in the road due to poor weather conditions.

 

[adaptabl]

Tesla has more important issues to deal with than AP at this time.

 

[Andrew]

Cameras do not work in fog and poor weather and are limited in low light. That will not be safe for level 5. People complain when a satellite service goes out in bad weather. I don't think many will be happy when the car stops dead in the road due to poor weather conditions.

If three (forward-facing) cameras -- plus radar and ultrasonic sensors -- can't see well enough in thick fog to drive, it seems to me that a human probably shouldn't be driving in those conditions, either.

 

[bthienthai]

If three (forward-facing) cameras -- plus radar and ultrasonic sensors -- can't see well enough in thick fog to drive, it seems to me that a human probably shouldn't be driving in those conditions, either.

I think that's a very good point.

 

[Moderatefan]

Cameras do not work in fog and poor weather and are limited in low light. That will not be safe for level 5. People complain when a satellite service goes out in bad weather. I don't think many will be happy when the car stops dead in the road due to poor weather conditions.

I am not expecting from Musk more than a human driver can achieve today. If you wouldn't drive under certain conditions, I would not trust to today's technology to drive in those conditions for me. Maybe in 10-20 years all cars can drive in fog, snow, w/o light and that's fine. This technology will take a lot of time to prove itself and by then the M3 will need replaced by a new car due to its age. I'm not waiting for level 5.

 

[TT97]

Tesla is camera based no lidar on Tesla's.


Tesla does not use Lidar.

I never said Tesla uses LIDAR - The Uber Volvo has LIDAR. Tesla uses cameras, ultrasonic sensors and radar.

 

[TT97]

Cameras do not work in fog and poor weather and are limited in low light. That will not be safe for level 5. People complain when a satellite service goes out in bad weather. I don't think many will be happy when the car stops dead in the road due to poor weather conditions.

LIDAR doesn't work well in fog either (or snow).

 

[ℬête Noire]

The Uber Volvo does have LIDAR. I believe all XC90s also come with "City Safety" pedestrian detection system that should have warned the driver and applied the brakes - not sure if this was disengaged by Uber.

It was disengaged by Uber, with the intention that the functionality be replaced by Uber's AV software utilizing it's own sensor array (one LIDAR, along with numerous radar sensors and cameras as you have pointed out).

The supplier of Volvo's stock system, Aptiv Llc, was quickly vocal to the press about that fact to make sure they got out from under the PR fecesstorm.

The problem in this case shouldn't have been Uber's placement, either, because the blind spot from a single LIDAR up high like it is only extends an estimated 3m around the vehicle. The woman and bike should have been in range.

I suppose one bad thing about a single LIDAR is no redundancy at that point of the system. Potential exists that the LIDAR unit failed in a way that wasn't apparent to Uber's AV software. That would suggest either a potential code deficiency, if not critical hardware design flaw if the code couldn't be written to detect it. You can't have a single point of failure, or any hardware failure really, not trigger a fail-safe sequence.

 

[jkirkwood001]

I'm excited to see how many of those were delivered in US vs exported. I'm selfishly hoping we get a lot of Canadian Model 3 deliveries this quarter so I might have a shot at the credit when I tentatively take delivery of my SR in Q4....

Doing our best, @JBare, doing our best...

 

[jkirkwood001]

Has anyone in Canada gotten a VIN? They only started getting invites about a week ago so quite possible those configs have barely started making it to the factory floor portion of the pipeline.

According to the Invites spreadsheet, not yet.

Canadian entries:

• 202 reservations
• 143 invites (71% - believe the submitters are front-end-loaded, meaning sheet includes fewer late reservationists)
• 54 configured (26%)
• 96 deferring (48%)
• Therefore 23% without status
• 0 VINs
• 0 deliveries

 

[ℬête Noire]

LIDAR doesn't work well in fog either (or snow).

Generally correct. They use visible or near-visible range EMF, so subject to interference by water droplets, snow, dust, insects, etc.

However it only collects relatively simple, limited scope data points, one after another. This allows some wiggle room for pulling signal out of noise to the extent that isn't possible with a image field optical system like a camera. There has been some modest progress in that.

This is where two front facing sensors sweeping the same critical area (assuming you can get them active at the same time, via some sort of pulse modulation or frequency offsets) could help. Second data stream tends to help a lot trying to pull signal out of noise.

 

[jkirkwood001]

If my boss asks me when the engineering work on a project is going to be done and I say "It will be done by the end of the month", that is effectively a promise from me that the work will be completed at that time.

If I said "i hope to be completed by the end of the month, if all goes well" then that's effectively what Elon is saying, except he never says "I hope" or "if all goes well".

I do agree with you that different people can interpret these same statements in different ways, but I don't know of any other CEOs that are able to make the statements he does, fail to deliver and get a pass over and over again.

Fair answer, @voip-ninja. I believe a more useful and equally-business-centric reply is "If X and Y happen, I will be done by the end of the month". Transparency is a good thing. To which the intelligent boss asks "what is the likelihood of each of those?" and can make an informed decision. This way, nobody should be surprised if you don't meet the deadline, especially if you can't control X or Y. It's a risk analysis.

So if Elon had said "IF we get the updated line automation robots in place by __ date, and IF we can resolve the quality issues on line ___ by ___ date, then we will hit 2,500 / week by March 31st". But he doesn't, he just gives the target, so he has to take the fall when they don't meet.

Thoughts?

 

[jkirkwood001]

Cameras do not work in fog and poor weather and are limited in low light. That will not be safe for level 5. People complain when a satellite service goes out in bad weather. I don't think many will be happy when the car stops dead in the road due to poor weather conditions.

I don't think this eliminates a Tesla - the car does not "stop dead". There are a lot of options for a Tesla or equivalent:

• In principle, cameras can see at least as well as our eyes do, better with extra-sensory sensors, e.g. radar & ultrasonic
• Disable AP and drive yourself - it's not AP or nothing (not that people won't complain: "I had to drive in a snowstorm, can you believe it?!? Crappy car!" - we get so spoiled)
• The AP adapts to the conditions, i.e. drives very slowly (we've all seen traffic driving at 20 mph in whiteout conditions, no?)

 

[Lbkmxp100d]

Cameras do not work in fog and poor weather and are limited in low light. That will not be safe for level 5. People complain when a satellite service goes out in bad weather. I don't think many will be happy when the car stops dead in the road due to poor weather conditions.

What do you think will happen with lidar base system in bad weather?! I prefer the camera based bc if the weather so bad that I couldn’t drive myself then I don’t want my car in the weather. Now if it’s just a thunderstorm that I would drive myself through then my camera based AP will do just fine. Not sure you can say the same w/ lidar or anysystem needing satellite/GPS communication.